Impact of attentional dysfunction in dyscalculia

Abstract

Significant educational delays, even in the absence of cognitive-processing deficits, can be attributed to the inability to sustain attention 1 . The relation between dyslexia and attention deficits is well established 2,3 . Although research on the relation between dyscalculia and attention deficits is limited, evidence is mounting for a pivotal relation between these two disorders. Indeed, attention deficits may be more strongly associated with dyscalculia than with dyslexia.The prevalence of dyscalculia in school-age children has been found to be at least 6% [4][5][6] . Studies have shown that some overlap between dyscalculia and dyslexia occurs. In one USA study, 6.4% of students aged 6 to 14 years had dyscalculia, 3.7% of whom had delayed skills in mathematics alone, while 2.7% had delayed skills in both reading and mathematics 5 . Several of these population studies have shown that attention deficits may be more strongly associated with dyscalculia than with dyslexia. In a non-referred cohort of 3029 Israeli 11-year-old school children, 185 (6.5%) were diagnosed with dyscalculia 6 , 26% of whom had symptoms of attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In a non-referred sample of students in Connecticut aged between 7 1 ⁄ 2 and 9 1 ⁄ 2 years, only 15% of the children diagnosed with dyslexia also exhibited inattention 3 .Relations between attention and reading While ADHD can exacerbate the severity and impact of dyslexia, these two disorders appear to have different etiologies 2,7 . Dyslexia is now considered to be most highly associated with disorders of phonological awareness; attentional disorders have only a limited association with such phonological deficits 8 .Pervis and Tannock 9 examined both the pragmatic and semantic language abilities of children with ADHD as well as the impact of concurrent reading disability (RD) on their performance. A total of four groups was examined: students with ADHD-only, RD-only, ADHD + RD, and a control group. Language abilities were investigated using a task that required recall of a lengthy narrative, and tests that assessed knowledge of the semantic aspects of language. The results generated two central findings: regardless of their RD status, children with ADHD exhibited difficulties in organizing and monitoring their story retelling; and regardless of their ADHD status, children with RD demonstrated deficits in receptive and expressive semantic language abilities. Thus the language problems encountered by children with ADHD without RD appear to reflect difficulties with language use (i.e. pragmatics) rather than deficits in the basic subsystems of language.Deficits in executive functions, the regulatory processes responsible for organizing and monitoring the processing of information and mobilizing attention, appear to account for these pragmatic difficulties encountered by children with ADHD. Shaywitz et al. 10 found that when children with comorbidity for RD and ADHD were examined, both the linguistic deficits associated with RD and the behavioral charact...

Contributors to the social goals and outcomes of students with ADHD with and without LD

“…Those students with both ADHD and co-occurring reading disabilities have the receptive and expressive language problems of both disabilities (Pisecco, Baker, Silva, & Brooke, 2001) but have more severe learning problems than children with only LD and more severe attention problems than those with only ADHD (Mayes et al, 2000). However, ADHD is not a LD (Geary, 1993;Lindsay, Tomazic, Levine, & Accardo, 1999;Mayes, Calhoun, & Crowell, 2000;Passolunghi & Siegel, 2004;Willcutt et al, 2001). That is, even though as many as 70% of clinic-referred samples of children with ADHD have co-occurring learning disabilities (Mayes et al, 2000), others report that only 30% of students fail to achieve to a level predicted by their IQ (for review see Barry, Lyman, Klinger, 2002).…”

“…There appears to be a continuum of difficulty, with students with LD and students with ADHD plus aggression demonstrating the most severe problems with timed addition facts, followed by pure ADHD groups and then by typical comparison students (MacLeod & Prior, 1996; for review see Zentall & Ferkis, 1993). About a quarter of students with math disabilities also have ADHD and these rates are higher for students with ADHD-I than for students with ADHD-H (Lindsay, Tomazic, Levine, & Accardo, 1999). Interestingly, math performance is used as a basis for self-judging intellectual ability (Stipek & MacIver, 1989).…”

Relations between balancing and arithmetic skills in children – Evidence of cerebellar involvement?

“…Denckla et al, 1985), can involve not only inattention but also hyperactivity, which cannot be appropriately assessed by the d2 test of attention. The potential confound, which is based on the comorbid occurrence of attentional and arithmetic difficulties, should have been eliminated, however, because children with arithmetic difficulties are predominantly found to be inattentive but do not display hyperactivity (Lindsay et al, 1999). In order to substantiate our findings, future studies should investigate the relationship between balancing and arithmetic skills in carefully controlled samples of dyscalculic children without ADHD.…”

“…This is remarkable because disorders in arithmetic frequently co-occur with attentional (e.g. Lindsay, Tomazic, Levine, & Accardo, 1999) as well as with reading disorders (e.g. Landerl & Moll, 2010).…”

A verbális fluencia és a munkamemória életkori változásai és szerepük az iskolai teljesítményben

“…A végrehajtó funkciók magas szintű működése alapja a figyelmi, gondolkodási és probléma-megoldási folyamatoknak, amelyek az iskolai teljesítményben meghatározó szerepet játszanak. A végrehajtó funkciók felelősek a komplex kognitív tesztek alatti kognitív folyamatok szabályozásáért és monitorozásáért (Lindsay, Tomazic, Levine és Accardo, 1999;Miyake és mtsai, 2000).…”