This task assesses self-efficacy when completing online mental-arithmetic problems. Participants are asked to self-report their maths ability, and then complete a number of problems. Periodically, they are asked to rate the difficulty of the problems and their own performance. We hypothesised that their rating of their own performance (corrected for baseline ability and question difficulty) might relate to mental health measures such as catastrophising.
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Before starting this task, participants are asked to rate their ability to solve maths problems on a continuous visual analogue scale from ‘really bad’ to ‘really good’. For each trial participants are then presented with a mathematical problem, which they have to answer within 10 seconds (though they are not told how long they have). A countdown is displayed for the final 3 seconds. Every 5 trials participants are asked “How well are you doing?”, which they answer on a continuous scale from “really badly” to “really well”. Next, they are asked: “How hard are the problems?”, which they answer on a continuous scale from “very easy” to “very hard”. The maths problems will be presented in a random order. At the end of the task participants will be told how many questions they answered right and how many they answered wrong. This task can be used to assess mental arithmetic performance (under time pressure), and self-rated online performance. The participant's estimate of difficulty and of ability can be used as covariates.
The instructions are: “You will have to solve mathematical problems. Please do not use a calculator. You will have a time limit for each problem.”
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