Oliver Lindemann

Statistics anxiety is widely recognised as a barrier to student learning, and the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS) is its most widely used self-report measure. However, it remains unclear whether the STARS captures a construct distinct from mathematics anxiety or reflects a jangle fallacy. Using a large international sample of undergraduate students (N = 6,885) from 83 universities across 33 countries, we examined the empirical distinctiveness of the STARS relative to the Revised Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale (R-MARS). Across four criteria, the evidence indicated substantial overlap. First, correlations between the STARS and R-MARS were consistently strong. Second, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that items clustered primarily by type of educational experience (e.g., tests, help-seeking, interpretation) rather than by domain, with limited and unstable domain-specific factors. Third, both scales demonstrated statistically equivalent associations with 11 theoretically related anxiety and education variables. Fourth, the R-MARS explained negligible incremental variance beyond the STARS across these outcomes. Together, the findings suggest that the STARS and R-MARS largely measure the same underlying construct. Their continued separate use risks redundancy, conceptual fragmentation, and statistical artefacts, underscoring the need for clearer construct definition and more precise measurement tools.

This study investigates the existence and direction of associations between physical stimulus size and vertical response locations. In Experiment 1, 80 participants responded to stimulus size by pressing one of two vertically arranged keys. We orthogonally manipulated within-subjects the mappings between stimulus size and response-key locations, and between hands and response keys. The results showed a novel compatibility effect between physical stimulus size and vertical response location: Responses to the small stimulus were faster at the lower than at the higher location, whereas responses to the large stimulus were faster at the higher than at the lower location. In Experiment 2, we replicated this compatibility effect in vocal responses, when 66 participants responded to stimulus size by saying location words. In combination with previous findings, the present results suggest that the physical size of visual objects is not only associated with horizontal locations but also with vertical locations. These associations presumably reflect learned correlations between the size of objects and their extension in both the horizontal and the vertical direction. Moreover, the observation of size–space compatibility effects in vocal responses may indicate that they do not only reflect sensorimotor experiences but also semantic knowledge, which is expressed in linguistic metaphors.

This chapter is an introduction to mental chronometry, the method of measuring the duration of responses as an indicator of information processing. We provide a short overview of the history of chronometric methods and demonstrate how measurements of reaction times or movement times can be utilised to study human cognition. General principles and paradigms to examine theoretical assumptions about different processing stages and the interdependence of cognitive processes are discussed. Afterwards, we illustrate how mental chronometry informs about the nature of cognitive representations by describing exemplary studies from the field of embodied cognition. The assumptions as well as the limits of the approach of mental chronometry will be explicitly listed and critically evaluated.

This chapter offers an overview on the bidirectional enrichment between the cognitive science of embodied cognition and other disciplines. First, the dynamic discourse between philosophy and embodied cognition is presented to convey mutual theoretical developments. Then, comparative psychology is described as a fruitful experimental domain to inform about the crucial role of organism–environment interaction in the evolution of adaptive behaviours during phylogeny. Third, the anthropological approach is introduced to inform about the influence of culturally determined learning on cognition during ontogeny. In the end, the field of robotics is briefly discussed to highlight how perception of the body constitutes a fundamental framework for extracting information from the world, and thus for the development of neural structures responsible for cognition and learning.

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and the cognitive reflection test, and collected demographics, previous mathematics grades, self-reported and official statistics grades, and statistics module details. Data reuse potential is broad, including testing links between anxieties and statistics/mathematics education factors, and examining instruments’ psychometric properties across different languages and contexts. Data and metadata are stored on the Open Science Framework website [https://osf.io/mhg94/].

This large, international dataset contains survey responses from N = 12,570 students from 100 universities in 35 countries, collected in 21 languages. We measured anxieties (statistics, mathematics, test, trait, social interaction, performance, creativity, intolerance of uncertainty, and fear of negative evaluation), self-efficacy, persistence, and the cognitive reflection test, and collected demographics, previous mathematics grades, self-reported and official statistics grades, and statistics module details. Data reuse potential is broad, including testing links between anxieties and statistics/mathematics education factors, and examining instruments’ psychometric properties across different languages and contexts. Data and metadata are stored on the Open Science Framework website (https://osf.io/mhg94/).

A recent study tested the timing accuracy of several software solutions to implement computer-based experiments (Bridges et al. 2020). We discuss some conceptual and implementation issues in an attempt to bring more general awareness to what implementing timing-accurate experiments crucially relies on: (1) familiarizing oneself with the basic principles of stimulus presentation as well as the specifics of the used experiment control software, and (2) understanding that timing accuracy estimates should never be understood as a hard promise to simply rely on without additional verification in a specific lab setting. We believe that the raised issues should be considered in a discussion on how software for computer-based experiments should be tested.