Linares, RocíoPelegrina, SantiagoDelgado-Rodríguez, Rafael2024-08-262024-08-262023-12-17Linares, R., Pelegrina, S., & Delgado-Rodríguez, R. (2023). Emotional processing of math-related words in people with math anxiety. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 27(5), 651-6661477-2205https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2023.2295476https://hdl.handle.net/10953/3131Background: Research exploring emotional responses to math-related words in individuals with math anxiety (MA) is scarce. Here, we examined MA participants’ subjective emotional processing of math-related cues within Lang’s bioinformational model of emotion to further understand the role of those cues in MA. Methods: In total, 41 high-MA and 32 low-MA undergraduates rated math-related words, along with neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant words, from the Affective Norms for English Words. The Self-Assessment Manikin was used to calculate valence, arousal, and dominance scores for each word. Results: The low-MA group rated math-related words as neutral on the three emotional scales, however, the high-MA group rated them lower and higher for valence and dominance than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. Moreover, math-related words were rated as more and less activating than neutral and unpleasant words, respectively. The two groups significantly differed in scores on the three scales only for the math-related words. Conclusions: These results provide evidence that individuals with high MA show altered emotional processing of math-related words, experiencing them as moderately aversive and moderately activating. The findings emphasize that the altered emotional processing of words associated with math should be considered a symptom of MA.engAtribución-SinDerivadas 3.0 Españahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/es/math anxietyemotional wordsmath wordsemotional processingSelf-Assessment Manikininfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess