The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences with Generalized, Test, and Math Anxiety
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7251/FLZB2324313TKeywords:
adverse childhood experiences (ACE), generalized anxiety, academic anxiety, test anxiety, math anxietyAbstract
Early adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are risk factors for generalized anxiety (GA). In addition to GA, specific modalities of the cocalled academic anxiety are also relevant at school age: test anxiety (TA) and math (MA) anxiety. It is not known whether ACEs are risk factors for both TA and MA, in the same way as they are for GA. Therefore, the relationship between ACE on the one hand and GA, TA and MA (dimensions related to learning mathematics – LMA and evaluating mathematical knowledge – MEA) on the other hand was examined. The sample consisted of 396 high school students. The total ACE score positively correlates with all examined dimensions of anxiety (correlation range: .22-.36), and most strongly with GA. GA correlates with dimensions of academic anxiety in the range: .40-.47. When GA is considered as a mediator between ACE score and dimensions of academic anxiety, GA fully mediates ACE effects, except in the case of LMA, for which both direct and indirect ACE effects are present. The individual ACE categories of peer isolation/rejection and emotional neglect are the strongest bivariate correlates of all dimensions of anxiety and are inherent risk factors (correlations controlled for other variables) for GA, from which it is assumed that they “spill over” to other types of anxiety. The findings imply that the dimensions of academic anxiety cannot simply be reduced to GA, but that they are related to it, and that the effects of ACE on these dimensions are mainly realized through GA, although there are some ACE categories that are specific risk factors for individual anxiety modalities. This is most obvious in the case of the LMA dimension, for which the categories of physical neglect and low SES are singled out as inherent risk factors.
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