GMATS: Graphology-Enhanced Math Affective Tutoring System to Support Students with Math Anxiety

This article introduces GMATS, a novel Affective Tutoring System (ATS) that employs graphology to recognize emotions through handwriting in an unobtrusive way in e-learning environments. Designed for touchscreen tablets, the system integrates an instructional module with online handwriting recognition and emotion detection units to identify students’ stress without specialized hardware. GMATS specifically addresses mathematics anxiety and academic stress, factors often neglected in prior ATSs, by incorporating adaptive coping strategies to support learners effectively. To examine the system’s performance, GMATS was evaluated against another version without the stress detection module and also compared to human teachers. A total of 45 middle school students with math anxiety participated in the study. Results showed that the stress recognition module achieved 95.5% accuracy. Moreover, GMATS significantly outperformed the alternative version in enhancing academic achievement. No significant correlation was observed between GMATS outcomes and teacher-based results, underscoring its unique potential in affective education.