The role of genetics in facing mathematics
Two people do not behave the same in the same situation and this is something that even children do not escape. A good example is the way in which many school children they face the subjects in the school and the sensations that certain subjects like the maths. While some people take it as something normal, others feel a sense of anxiety.
Why do some children feel this anxiety and others do not? Is it simply a particular personality or is there something else? After the discoveries of King College's, in London, one could say yes. That the feeling that many minors have at the time of facing this subject or a problem of geometry.
Brand of the professional future
The fact that a person suffers from this type of anxiety or not when facing these subjects can decide their professional future. For a child to experience this sensation while solving a problem of maths assumes that you are less likely to pursue a career related to this field. In this sense, spatial skills are crucial when it comes to success or not in these studies.
But what determines having good spatial skills or not? Well, as this study has found, anxiety. This feeling greatly conditions these abilities and this is where genetics has an explanation. To reach these conclusions, the team of researchers analyzed the cases of 1,400 couples of twins who were between 19 and 21 years old.
These were questioned by the anxiety they felt generally and more specifically by that which caused them to perform a math problem. Both sensations proved to have a characteristic genetic component. In more than a third of cases, the characteristics of DNA They explained these cases.
Less anxiety in other cases
The researchers also found that those subjects They showed the highest level of anxiety in other tasks, such as orienting themselves on a map, they presented a lower sensation of this type when it comes to making a problem of mathematics or geometry. In these cases the genetic characteristics of each one also explained these reasons.
Of course, the researchers remember the importance that the environment also has in these cases. When the twins had not developed in the same environment, that is, they had not shared the same education or the same group of friends, the feeling of anxiety also changed. This is where the second important factor in learning comes in: the upbringing that has received at home.
If at home the child appreciates how his parents do not have much esteem for mathematics and when he asks for help to solve a problem he finds himself with expensive manners, he will also end up rejecting this subject. In the same way also it is precise that the professionals of their school are able to explain the subject in a way that all students understand and that they can even dedicate extra hours to those who need it.
Damián Montero
