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Why does math anxiety affect times tables more than other math?
It's no coincidence that math anxiety shows up so clearly on times tables. The way the brain stores them makes them especially sensitive to the kind of disruption anxiety causes.
What the research says
Times tables are stored as verbal memories, sequences of sounds handled in the language areas of the brain, not the math ones (Dehaene & Cohen, 1997). That’s why you remember “seven times eight, fifty-six” the way you remember a song lyric.
Ashcraft and Krause’s research on math anxiety documented a precise mechanism: anxiety works like a second task running in the background, taking up working memory that would otherwise be used to remember. With times tables, which are verbal memories, the competition is direct: worried thoughts use the same mental space that recall depends on.
This isn’t a general problem with memory or intelligence. It’s a precise clash between how the brain stores times tables and how anxiety works. Other kinds of math, like reasoning, estimating or word problems, rely more on spatial and step-by-step working memory, which anxiety disrupts less directly.
In practice: under anxiety, a child may be unable to remember a fact they’ve memorized. They haven’t forgotten it: the memory is blocked for a moment. Once they’re calm, the answer usually comes back.
What this means in practice
The answer isn’t to remove all pressure from times table practice: that’s neither possible nor necessary. It’s to make recall so automatic that it no longer needs the working memory anxiety takes up. Truly automatic recall happens without thinking, and then anxiety has nothing to compete with.
Try this
- If your child always gets a fact wrong under pressure but knows it when relaxed, they haven’t forgotten it: it just isn’t automatic enough yet to hold up under anxiety.
- Choose calm, repeated practice over any kind of pressured drill, until the answer comes instantly even when asked out of the blue.
- If anxiety blocks recall, it doesn’t mean your child hasn’t practiced enough. It means the answer isn’t automatic yet. The fix is more calm practice, not more pressure.
Sources
- Ashcraft & Krause (2007) — peer-reviewed study
- Dehaene & Cohen (1997) — peer-reviewed study
Last reviewed: 2026-08-01