Cracking the Stereotype Threat Equation: Associations with Executive Functions and the Math Performance of Latine College Students

Perceived ethnic bias has a negative impact on the academic development of students from racial/ethnic minorities. This can be observed in the detrimental effects that being exposed to negative stereotypes about their ethnic group, has on Latine students' mathematical performance, a phenomenon known as stereotype threat (ST). Much of the ST research to date, highlights the effects of gender stereotypes on students' (particularly women's) performance on academic tasks completed mainly in untimed settings. Moreover, working memory is thought to be the only executive function (EF) mediating ST effects on academic performance. My dissertation project aimed to explore the unique impact that ethnic stereotypes would have on Latine college students' performance on mathematical tasks completed with and without time pressure. Likewise, I aimed to assess how different EFs (namely working memory and inhibitory control), and participants' gender contributed to these associations. 80 Latine college students provided data on ethnic ST awareness via questionnaires, EFs via computerized and verbal tasks, and calculation skills via standardized mathematical tests. Moderated mediation demonstrated that teacher-induced ethnic ST (i.e., students' perception that their mathematics teachers/instructors treated them differently because of their ethnicity) had a negative indirect effect on timed calculation skills via inhibitory control; gender did not moderate this association. In contrast, peer-induced ST and general composite score of ethnic ST did not yield indirect associations with calculation skills. These results aid in understanding the unique effect of ethnic/racial stereotypes on Latine students' mathematics performance.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Department dc:contributor.department

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Diaz Benitez, Vanessa Paola

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Bell, Martha Ann

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Gülseven, Zehra
• Norton, Anderson Hassell
• Hornburg, Caroline Byrd

• stereotype threat
• executive functions
• mathematics performance
• Latine
• college

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:44952

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/139838