Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Mathematical thinking and learning are negatively affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which have beenshown to impact school attendance, behavioral issues, and achievement of grade-level standards of a variety of academicsubjects (Blodgett & Lanigan, 2018). ACEs are often linked to permanent physiological changes to the nervous system ina dose-response relationship (Dube, Felitti, Dong, Giles, & Anda, 2003). Laboratory studies have identified physiologicalindicators–such as heart rate variability–which can point to students who may have unique learning needs, but this has notyet been tested in a classroom setting, where students learning needs may be amplified (Smith, Thayer, Khalsa, & Lane,2017). In this study we use sport watches to explore the value of measuring heart rate variability of students while theyare in the classroom to predict those who may need support to optimize learning in math class.