| Faculty Advisor |
Isabella Starling Alves
|
|---|---|
| Contact Email | istarlingalves2@unl.edu |
| Website | |
| Advisor College: |
Education & Human Sciences
|
| Potential Student Tasks |
Students will help with designing cognitive experiments and collecting data. They will also have opportunities to conduct literature review and data analysis and to disseminate findings. |
| Student Qualifications |
We are looking for students who are curious about research and interested in engaging in hands-on learning. Students from different backgrounds are welcome to apply. We are looking for people interested in learning more about different steps in educational neuroscience research, including experimental design, data collection, data analysis, and scientific writing. |
| Training, Mentoring, and Workplace Community |
The Mind, Brain, and Education Lab conducts research that combines cognitive science, neuroscience, and education. The ongoing projects focus on the cognitive and emotional bases of STEM learning, with a particular focus on mathematics. We strive to maintain a collaborative and respectful lab environment where teamwork is the core value. |
| Available Positions |
2
|
Despite its importance, the acquisition of STEM skills is challenging for many people. Often, these challenges are accompanied by negative feelings about mathematics.
Mathematics anxiety is the feeling of fear, tension, or worry towards mathematics. People with high mathematics anxiety tend to avoid mathematics, and experience negative thoughts when solving mathematics problems.
Our research seeks to better understand math anxiety, examine how it affects different areas of math learning, and explore ways to reduce its impact.
In particular, we focus on three question such as:
- What brain regions and neural mechanisms are associated with mathematics anxiety?
- How is the cause-effect relation between mathematics anxiety and mathematics learning difficulties? Does anxiety lead to learning challenges, or do learning difficulties increase anxiety?
- How does math anxiety influence the acquisition of different mathematics skills, such as quantity understanding, whole-numbers, fractions, and algebra?