Math anxiety

Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain`s limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem.Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person`s working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test. Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.