Eugene E. Levitt
Department of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

Lucreda A. Hutton
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Indiana-Purdue University at Indianapolis

The debilitating effects of academic anxiety on student performance have
long been recognized ( Levitt, 1980). Educational and psychological re-
searchers have been studying the phenomenon that is usually known as test
anxiety for many years ( Spielberger - Sarason, 1978). However, it is only
recently that subject-specific anxieties have been considered. The para-
mount example is the phenomenon known popularly as mathematics anxie-
ty. R. M. Suinn, a leading researcher in this area, reported in 1970 that over
one-third of a group of college students participating in a program to reduce
test anxiety indicated that discomfort with mathematics courses was at the
center of their academic fears ( Suinn, 1970).

Recognition that the world of verbal symbol users is uneasy with number
concepts has probably been known at some level since the beginning of
public education. There is some evidence that mathematics anxiety begins as
early as the first or second grade ( Papay, Costello, Hedl & Spielberger,
1975). Formal remediation efforts began at least a decade and a half ago
( Natkin, 1966). Almost all the published research has appeared in the last
decade, sparked by the development of the Mathematics Anxiety Rating
Scale (MARS) by Suinn ( Suinn, Edie, Nicoletti, & Spinelli, 1972). Suinn's
definition ( Richardson & Suinn, 1972) of the phenomenon is succinct: "...a

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