The Relation of Spatial Skills and Spatial Memory Span with Statistics Anxiety

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Title  

The relation of spatial skills, spatial memory span, and two anxiety types with statistics anxiety in European and North American University students 

Authors  

Rose- Marie Gibeau, Sébastien Béland, Erin A. Maloney, Michael Cantinotti, Lucile Chanquoy, Daniel Lalande, Jessica Simon, Charlotte Paulis, Gaën Plancher, Marie- Aude Boislard, Denis Cousineau (2026) 

Journal and DOI  

• British Journal of Educational Psychology 

• https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.70063 

Previous Research   

• Many university students experience statistics anxiety, which can negatively impact learning and performance in statistics courses. Statistics anxiety is especially common amongst students in social sciences. 

• Previous research has shown strong relations between statistics anxiety and mathematics anxiety, but little is known about the relations between statistics anxiety and spatial anxiety.  

• Spatial skills and working memory are known to play an important role in mathematics learning, but little is known about whether spatial skills and working memory are related to statistics anxiety. 

• Researchers have suggested that understanding statistics likely involves mentally manipulating and organizing information, which could rely on spatial skills. 

What did we ask?  

• Are spatial skills related to statistics abilities?  

• Do students with stronger spatial skills experience less statistics anxiety?  

• Could spatial anxiety, mathematics anxiety, and working memory help explain this relationship? 

How did we do it?  

A total of 680 social science students from universities in Canada, France, and Belgium participated in two studies. 

Participants completed: 1) Questionnaires measuring: statistics anxiety, mathematics anxiety, spatial anxiety; 2) Cognitive tasks measuring: spatial working memory, verbal working memory, spatial reasoning skills. 

Researchers then examined how these abilities and anxiety types were related. 

What did we find?  

Study 1: Students with stronger spatial working memory tended to report: 

• Lower spatial anxiety 

• Lower mathematics anxiety 

• Lower statistics anxiety 

Study 2: Students with better spatial reasoning skills, especially the ability to mentally manipulate objects, reported lower statistics anxiety.Study 2: Students with better spatial reasoning skills, especially the ability to mentally manipulate objects, reported lower statistics anxiety. 

Researchers found that: 

• Poorer spatial skills were linked to greater spatial anxiety. 

• Greater spatial anxiety was linked to greater mathematics anxiety. 

• Greater mathematics anxiety was linked to greater statistics anxiety.  

Take away Message  

• Understanding statistics may rely on more than numerical skills alone. 

• The ability to mentally organize and manipulate information appears to be related to students’ statistics anxiety. 

• Students with stronger spatial skills tended to report lower levels of statistics anxiety, while students with greater spatial anxiety tended to report higher levels of statistics anxiety. 

• These findings highlight the importance of spatial skills in statistics education and suggest new ways to support students, such as implementing spatial training exercises in classrooms. 

Brought to you by Dr. Erin Maloney’s Cognition and Emotion Lab at the University of Ottawa.