Introduction: Spatial ability (SA) is known to be closely related to maths ability (Ashcraft & Faust, 1994) and impaired spatial abilities may lead to reduced performance in maths-related tasks. As maths anxiety has proved to negatively associate with performance on arithmetic problem solving (Ashcraft & Faust, 1994), Maloney (2011) hypothesised that HMA as a vulnerable group will also show deficit in spatial processing. In the present study the effects of maths anxiety on the association between math performance and spatial ability were investigated. The effects were controlled for trait anxiety and general cognitive ability.
Methods: 98 people (18-48 age, 34% female) participated in the study. Maths performance was measured with Problem Verification Task (PVT, Murphy & Mazzocco, 2008) and Number Series Test (NST, Smith, Fernandes, Strand 2001). Spatial ability was assessed with Mental rotation task (MRT, Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). Intelligence was measured with Raven’s Matrices test (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998). Maths anxiety was measured with sMARS questionnaire (Alexander & Martray, 1989), trait anxiety (TA) was assessed with the Spielberger’s test (Spielberger, 1983).
Results: The moderation analysis showed that the effect of MA was present only for PVT reaction time: the interaction term between MA and MRT was significant (B = -.18, β = -.20, t = -2.06, p =<.05), after controlling for intelligence. The simple slope analysis indicated that higher spatial ability was associated with reduced response time in PVT, but it was only true for people with average and high levels of MA. To clarify the specific effect of MA additional analysis was done with TA as moderator. Analysis showed no significant interaction for PVT reaction time. However, for people with low levels of TA higher spatial ability was associated with lower accuracy in PVT (B = .18, β = .22, t = 2.28, p =<.05).
Discussion: The data provides new evidence that MA can be a moderator between spatial ability and math performance. The results are discussed in the context of the arousal effect, described by Yerkes and Dodson (Yerkes, Dodson, 1908) and are in line with inverted U-shaped relationship between MA and maths performance (Wang et al.,2015). The analysis showed that the higher spatial ability was associated with the reduced response time in PVT, but it was only true for individuals with medium and high MA. Contrary to the generally accepted view on MA as a negative factor, it can act as an arousal factor that improves performance in some math-related tasks.
