Numerical Magnitude Representation in Children With Mathematical Difficulties With or Without Reading Difficulties

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC), the flanker, and the numerical distance effects in children with mathematical difficulties. From a sample of 720 third, fourth, and fifth graders, 60 children were selected and divided into the following three groups: typically developing children (TD; n = 29), children with mathematical difficulties only (MD only; n = 21), and children with mathematical and reading difficulties (MD+RD; n = 10). Children were tested with a numerical Eriksen task that was built to assess SNARC, numerical distance, and flanker (first and second order congruency) effects. Children with MD only showed stronger SNARC and second order congruency effects than did TD children, whereas the numerical distance effects were similar across the three groups. Finally, the first order congruency effect was associated with reading difficulties. These results showed that children with mathematical difficulties with or without reading difficulties were globally more impaired when spatial incompatibilities were presented.

Hand preference and Mathematical Learning Difficulties: New data from Greece, the United Kingdom, and Germany and two meta-analyses of the literature

“…Comorbidity had also been shown with disorders such as the Fragile X syndrome and Turner syndrome (Mazzocco, 2001;Murphy & Mazzocco, 2008;Murphy, Mazzocco, Gerner, & Henry, 2006), aphasia (e.g., Semenza et al, 2006), focal neurodegenerative syndromes posterior cortical atrophy (Miller et al, 2018), acute vestibular neuritis (Moser, Vibert, Caversaccio & Mast, 2017a), peripheral vestibular deficits (Moser, Vibert, Caversaccio, & Mast, 2017b), developmental language disorder (Verly et al, 2018), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Kuhn, Ise, Raddatz, Schewenk, & Dobel, 2016), dyslexia (Wilson et al, 2015) and with deficits in working memory (Attout & Majerus, 2015;Geary, Hoard, & Bailey, 2012a;Menon, 2016), reading (Geary et al, 2012b;Greiffenstein & Baker, 2002;Tobia, Fasola, Lupieri, & Marzocchi, 2016), visual-spatial skills (Szucs, Devine, Soltesz, Nobes, & Gabriel, 2013), and attention (Askenazi & Henik, 2010b;Fletcher, 2005). Of note, many of the neurodevelopmental conditions mentioned above have a higher incidence in males, similarly to MLD, for example the Fragile X syndrome (Turner, Webb, Wake & Robinson, 1996), dyslexia (Arnett et al, 2017;but also see Jiménez et al, 2011, who did not find a sex difference), and ADHD (Arnett, Pennington, Willcutt, DeFries, & Olson, 2015).…”

Early Literacy and Numeracy Skills in Bilingual Minority Children: Toward a Relative Independence of Linguistic and Numerical Processing

“…This also seems to be sustained by developmental changes in brain networks underlying numerical processing, with the left angular gyrus supporting the manipulation of numbers in verbal form ( Dehaene et al, 2003 ). Furthermore, studies on clinical populations have documented a high comorbidity of reading and math difficulties ( Swanson and Jerman, 2006 ; Landerl and Moll, 2010 ; Tobia et al, 2016b ), and this has fostered research investigating the role of non-mathematical predictors in mathematical development ( Purpura and Ganley, 2014 ).…”

Revisión sistemática: perfil cognitivo de dislexia y discalculia comórbidas

“…Con el objetivo de identificar los déficits diferenciadores y compartidos en ambos trastornos y si estos tienen carácter general o específico, en la Tabla 3 se recogen los resultados al respecto. Se han excluido los estudios que no cuentan con subgrupos de DD sola y DC sola (Mammarella et al, 2013a;Mammarella et al, 2013b;Tobia et al, 2014;Zhang y Wu, 2011) para su comparación, así como, los resultados referidos a otros trastornos incluidos en las muestras (Moll et al, 2016), tampoco se incluyen estudios centrados en el desempeño de tareas concretas que los investigadores no relacionan con habilidades cognitivas de dominio general o específico (Peake et al, 2015;Raddatz et al, 2016). Con "déficits diferenciadores" nos referimos a aquellos que solo se encuentran asociados a uno de los trastornos, mientras que con "déficits compartidos" nos estamos refiriendo a aquellos que se encuentras en ambos trastornos, tanto en DD como en DC solas, sin que exista comorbilidad.…”

“…Según Tobia et al (2014), mientras que los estudiantes con desarrollo típico de tercero a quinto curso ya pueden recordar los resultados de las comparaciones entre dígitos de la memoria a largo plazo, los niños con DC nunca desarrollaron rastros mnésicos de estos resultados debido a sus dificultades en la MT; la falta o debilidad de estos rastros mnésicos, los lleva a emplear estrategias más primitivas basadas en la representación espacial de los dígitos. Esta dependencia de la representación espacial puede ser compensada por apoyos físicos y manipulables como líneas numéricas o bloques que faciliten el acceso al valor numérico.…”