Math anxiety (MA) is negatively related to math performance. One proposed intervention with potential to disrupt the MA-math performance link is expressive writing. The current study aimed to conceptually replicate Park and colleagues (2014). In that study, the authors concluded that expressive writing effectively boosted math anxious students’ performance. In our current sample of 168 college students, participants randomly assigned to the expressive writing condition were no more accurate at posttest than were other participants assigned to a math self-concept intervention, active control, or passive control. Additionally, participants in the math self-concept and active control conditions reported lower state MA immediately following the intervention; participants in the expressive writing and passive control conditions reported no differences between pretest and posttest state MA. The current study provides boundary conditions for the effectiveness of expressive writing interventions in ameliorating MA during difficult math tasks and illuminates potential mechanisms underlying MA.

Recent work has suggested that cross-notation understanding (e.g., 2/5 vs. 0.25) is important for math outcomes. In this study, equivalent fraction, decimal, and percent stimuli were used to examine individual differences in cross-notation and within-notation comparison in undergraduate students (N=183). Hierarchical linear regression analyses suggested that cross-notation magnitude comparison accuracy added explanatory power beyond that of within-notation magnitude comparison accuracy in predicting fraction arithmetic calculation and estimation skills, as well as ACT scores. Additionally, participants did not perceive equivalent rational numbers as equivalent when expressed in different notations (e.g., percentages were perceived as larger than equivalent fractions or decimals). Undergraduate students were also randomly assigned to one of two number line interventions: one focused on emphasizing connections among fractions, decimals, and percentages and another focused on developing fraction magnitude representations. Both interventions yielded improvements in rational number understanding, but there were some greater benefits of the cross-notation intervention.

Fractions knowledge is essential to everyday life, yet many children and adults struggle to accurately represent fractions. This is the first study to investigate adults’ confidence judgments and eye fixations as they solved fractions number line estimation, magnitude comparison, and magnitude ordering tasks. Educational implications are discussed.

East Asian students routinely outperform American peers in mathematics. One source of this learning gap may be linguis-tic, such as explicitly naming part-whole relations in fractions (e.g., of four parts, one in Korean vs. one-fourth in English).Our study examined whether adopting such language would improve American children’s number-line estimates. To testthis, 83 10-year-olds were read fractions using either Korean-style or English names over pretest, training, and posttest. Inboth conditions, number-line problems either had no landmarks, landmarks that matched the denominator, or landmarksthat did not match the denominator. As expected, we observed a session by problem type interaction (F=2.71, p¡.05),indicating that feedback improved accuracy most for problems involving matching landmarks. Surprisingly, the effect ofKorean naming was to reduce accuracy across all problems and test phases (ps ¡ .01). Results offer an important warningagainst linguistic reform that may be harmful for American students.