Math achievements in school is a strong predictor of later academic outcomes, careers aspirations, choice of STEM professions, retention is STEM education, socio-economic status in adulthood. A number of studies (see Ababneh & Kodippili, 2020) demonstrate a huge achievement gap in math between rural and urban areas (where the former underperform), that is widened over time (Graham & Provost, 2012). Variety of cognitive, socio-emotional and environmental factors may explain group differences in math achievements (see Myers et al., 2017).

In particular, a number of studies pointed out the negative association between math anxiety and math achievements across different ages, genders and cultural contexts (see Zhang et al., 2019 for a review). The link between math performance and math anxiety is related to both individual and socio-cultural factors. Numerous researchers are dedicated to revealing the factors that moderate the relationship between math achievement and math anxiety, yet yielding controversial results. Thus, the link between math anxiety and math achievements was shown to be stronger for Asian students in comparison with their European peers (Zhang et al., 2019). In contrast, another study (Lee, 2009) reveals that in some Asian countries students demonstrate high math achievements despite high math anxiety, whereas in European countries high math achievements are linked to low math anxiety. Some studies show that association between math anxiety and math achievement is especially pronounced in children with high working memory (Ramirez et al., 2013, 2016), whereas other demonstrate that children with high math anxiety and low working memory are particularly vulnerable to poor performance in math (Soltanlou et al., 2019).

Among cognitive factors, general fluid intelligence is shown to be strongly associated with math achievements (Semeraro et al., 2023). In particular, non-verbal intelligence predicts math achievements in secondary (Bouchefra et al., 2022) and high (Tikhomirova et al., 2016) school, and the link is especially strong for achievements on high stakes exam (Tikhomirova et al., 2016) and complex tasks (Peng et al., 2019), as well as for older children and children from families with high SES (Peng et al., 2019).

Overall, studies suggest an intricate interplay between math achievements, math anxiety, cognitive abilities and socio-demographic factors. However, few papers are focused on cultural differences in that complex association. In particular, the specificity of that interplay for rural and urban living areas remains largely unexplored. The current study is aimed to investigate the association between math achievements, non-verbal intelligence, math anxiety, gender and age separately for urban and rural living areas of China. 

A total sample consists of 2444 schoolchildren. 1412 (58%) of them are schoolchildren living in Chinese urban areas, (51% females, M = 12.04, sd = 1.07), 1032 (42%) – schoolchildren, living in Chinese rural areas (50% females, M = 13.63, sd = 1.16). Math achievement scores were provided by school administration. Math achievements reflect the score on a final math exam. Maximal possible score is 100 for elementary school and 150 – for secondary school. Raven’s Progressive Matrices was used as a measure of non-verbal intelligence. RPM consists of 6 blocks of tasks (A, B, C, D, E, F) with 12 items in each block. The difficulty of tasks increases within each block (e.g. A12 is more difficult than A1) and between blocks (e.g. F1 is more difficult than A1). Each task represents a matrix of geometric patterns with a missing element that has to be chosen from multiple options. Each answer is evaluated as eighter correct (1 point) or incorrect (0 points). The maximal possible score is 72. Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale was used as a measure of math anxiety level. AMAS consists of 9 items. 5 of them relate to learning math anxiety and describes situations that emerges during regular math learning, such as “I feel anxious watching the teacher work on an algebraic equation on the blackboard”. 4 of them relate to math evaluation anxiety and describe situations of assessment of math abilities, such as “I feel anxious taking an examination on a math score”. Participants have to evaluate how much they agree with each statement from 1 (absolutely disagree) to 5 (absolutely agree). The maximal possible score is 45.

Overall, despite no differences in non-verbal intelligence and subtle differences in math anxiety between rural and urban areas are observed, urban schoolchildren dramatically outperform their rural counterparts in math. Notably, the gap between rural and urban Chinese schoolchildren remains even after controlling for age, parental education, non-verbal intelligence and math anxiety. In both cultural contexts, non-verbal intelligence shows moderate positive association with math achievements, with no substantial difference in magnitude between rural and urban schoolchildren (r = 0.38 and r = 0.36 correspondingly). On the other hand, math anxiety demonstrates moderate negative association with math achievements with no differences for rural and urban areas (r = - 0.35 for both areas) and with no notable gender differences. Additionally, for both subsamples non-verbal intelligence slightly moderates the association between math anxiety and math achievements with the weakest link for children with superior intellectual abilities. In rural areas, math achievements deteriorate with age dramatically, while in urban China such a deterioration is not so pronounced, what result an achievement gap widening over time. Notably, high non-verbal intelligence, low or medium math anxiety and high maternal education serves as protective factors for deterioration of math achievements with age in urban population. Interestingly, for rural subpopulation, only high non-verbal intelligence attenuates the negative link between age and achievements. Regarding gender differences, boys surpass girls in math in urban areas, while no gender differences are observed for rural areas. On the contrary, in both rural and urban areas girls outperform boys in non-verbal intelligence. At the same time, in urban areas girls exhibit higher math anxiety, whereas no gender differences in math anxiety level are observed for rural subsample.

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