Why does math anxiety affect times tables more than other math?

It isn't a coincidence that math anxiety shows up most visibly on times tables. The way tables are stored in the brain makes them uniquely vulnerable to exactly the kind of disruption anxiety produces.

What the research says

Times tables are stored as verbal memories — sequences of sounds processed in the language areas of the brain, not the mathematical ones (Dehaene & Cohen, 1997). This is why you can recall “seven eights are fifty-six” the same way you recall a song lyric.

Ashcraft and Krause’s foundational research on math anxiety documented a specific mechanism: anxiety acts like a second task running in the background, occupying working memory resources that would otherwise be used for retrieval. For times table facts — which are verbal memories stored in the language system — this is a direct competition: the worrying thoughts that anxiety generates use the same mental workspace that verbal retrieval depends on.

This is not a general impairment of memory or intelligence. It’s a precise clash between the storage mechanism for times tables and the mechanism through which anxiety operates. Other types of math — such as reasoning, estimation, or word problems — rely more on spatial and procedural working memory, which anxiety disrupts less directly.

The practical consequence: a child can lose access to a memorized times table fact under anxiety, not because they’ve forgotten it, but because retrieval is temporarily blocked. Once calm is restored, the fact is typically accessible again.

What this means in practice

The solution is not to eliminate all pressure from times table practice — that’s neither practical nor necessary. The solution is to build retrieval to a level of automaticity where it no longer requires the verbal working memory that anxiety competes with. Truly automatic recall happens below conscious processing — at that level, anxiety has nothing to compete with.

Try this

• If your child consistently fails on a fact under pressure but gets it right when relaxed, the fact is not unlearned — it’s not yet automatic enough to be anxiety-proof.
• Prioritize calm, repeated retrieval practice over any form of pressure-based drilling, until the fact is instant even when asked unexpectedly.
• Don’t interpret anxiety-blocked retrieval as evidence of insufficient practice. It’s evidence of insufficient automaticity. The solution is more calm practice, not more pressure.

Last reviewed: 2026-08-01