dyscalculia

Dyscalculia^[p] or math disability is a specific learning disability involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics. It is akin to dyslexia and can include confusion about math symbols. Dyscalculia can also occur as the result of some types of brain injury.

Overview

Dyscalculia was originally identified, in case studies, with patients who suffered specific arithmetic disabilities as a result of damage to specific regions of the brain. Recent research suggests that dyscalculia can also occur developmentally, as a genetically-linked learning disability which affects a person's ability to understand, remember, or manipulate numbers or number facts (e.g., the multiplication tables). The term is often used to refer specifically to the inability to perform arithmetic operations, but it is also defined by some educational professionals and cognitive psychologists as a more fundamental inability to conceptualize numbers as abstract concepts of comparative quantities (a deficit in "number sense").^[1] Those who argue for this more-constrained definition of dyscalculia sometimes prefer to use the technical term "Arithmetic Difficulties" (AD) to refer to calculation and number memory deficits.

Dyscalculia is a lesser known disability, similar and potentially related to dyslexia and developmental dyspraxia. Dyscalculia occurs in people across the whole IQ range, and sufferers often, but not always, also have difficulties with time, measurement, and spatial reasoning.^{[citation needed]} Current estimates suggest it may affect about 5% of the population. Although some researchers believe that dyscalculia necessarily implies mathematical reasoning difficulties as well as difficulties with arithmetic operations, there is evidence (especially from brain damaged patients) that arithmetic (e.g. calculation and number fact memory) and mathematical (abstract reasoning with numbers) abilities can be dissociated. That is (some researchers argue), an individual might suffer arithmetic difficulties (or dyscalculia), with no impairment of, or even giftedness in, abstract mathematical reasoning abilities.

The word dyscalculia comes from Greek and Latin which means: "counting badly". The prefix "dys" comes from Greek and means "badly". "Calculia" comes from the Latin "calculare". which means "to count". That word "calculare" again comes from "calculus", which means "pebble" or one of the counters on an abacus.

Dyscalculia can be detected at a young age and measures can be taken to ease the problems faced by younger students. The main problem is understanding the way mathematics is taught to children. In the way that dyslexia can be dealt with by using a slightly different approach to teaching, so can dyscalculia. However, dyscalculia is the lesser known of these learning disorders and so is often not recognized.

Potential symptoms

• Frequent difficulties with arithmetic, confusing the signs: +, −, ÷ and ×.
• Difficulty with everyday tasks like checking change and reading analog clocks.
• Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.
• Difficulty with multiplication-tables, and subtraction-tables, addition tables, division tables, mental arithmetic, etc.
• May do fairly well in subjects such as science and geometry, which require logic rather than formulae, until a higher level requiring calculations is obtained.
• Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time. May be chronically late.
• Particularly problems with differentiating between left and right.
• Difficulty navigating or mentally "turning" the map to face the current direction rather than the common North=Top usage.
• Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 10 or 20 feet (3 or 6 metres) away).
• Often unable to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.
• An inability to read a sequence of numbers, or transposing them when repeated, such as turning 56 into 65.
• Difficulty keeping score during games.
• Difficulty with games such as poker with more flexible rules for scoring.
• Difficulty in activities requiring sequential processing, from the physical (such as dance steps) to the abstract (reading, writing and signaling things in the right order). May have trouble even with a calculator due to difficulties in the process of feeding in variables.
• The condition may lead in extreme cases to a phobia or durable anxiety of mathematics and mathematic-numeric devices/coherences.
• Low latent inhibition, i.e., over-sensitivity to noise, smell, light and the inability to tune out, filtering unwanted information or impressions. Might have a well-developed sense of imagination due to this (possibly as cognitive compensation to mathematical-numeric deficits).

Potential causes

Scientists have yet to understand the causes of dyscalculia. They have been investigating in several domains.

• Neurological: Dyscalculia has been associated with lesions to the supramarginal and angular gyri at the junction between the temporal and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex.^[2][3]
• Deficits in working memory: Adams and Hitch^[4] argue that working memory is a major factor in mental addition. From this base, Geary^[5] conducted a study that suggested there was a working memory deficit for those who suffered from dyscalculia. However, working memory problems are confounded with general learning difficulties, thus Geary's findings may not be specific to dyscalculia but rather may reflect a greater learning deficit.

Other causes may be:

• Short term memory being disturbed or reduced, making it difficult to remember calculations.
• Congenital or hereditary disorders. Studies show indications of this, but the evidence is not yet concrete.^{[citation needed]}

Treatment

Dyscalculia has no cure per se, but various treatment options have been explored including electro-shock therapy. Counselling can help, but not necessarily to a large degree. No therapy has been properly verified and proven to be effective. Some anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that a certain amount of mathematical proficiency can be acquired by alternative systems of mathematical calculation such as Eastern mathematics. Anecdotal evidence also suggests, in fact, that dyscalculic individuals might themselves pursue such systems out of need or interest. The condition need not be seen as a disability, there is nothing preventing people who suffer from dyscalculia from succeeding in other academic fields such as history, geography and other social sciences, or in artistic fields such as music or drama.

See also

• Acalculia
• Gerstmann syndrome: dyscalculia is one of a constellation of symptoms acquired after damage to the angular gyrus.
• The DSM-IV diagnosis mathematics disorder can be applied to people whose mathematical abilities are well below the expected level for their age.
• Dyslexia
• Dysgraphia
• Numerical cognition
• Number sense

Notes

References

• Abeel, Samantha, 2003. My Thirteenth Winter. Orchard Books. ISBN 0-439-33904-9
• Attwood, Tony, 2002. Dyscalculia in Schools: What It Is and What You Can Do. First and Best in Education Ltd. ISBN 1-86083-614-3
• Butterworth, Brian, 2004. Dyscalculia Guidance: Helping Pupils With Specific Learning Difficulties in Maths. David Fulton Publications. ISBN 0-7087-1152-9
• Chinn, Steve, 2004. The Trouble with Maths: A Practical Guide to Helping Learners with Numeracy Difficulties. RoutledgeFalmer. ISBN 0-415-32498-X
• Henderson, Anne, Came, Fil, and Brough, Mel, 2003, Working with Dyscalculia. Learning Works International Ltd. ISBN 0-9531055-2-0
• Kosc, Ladislav, 1974, "Developmental dyscalculia," Journal of Learning Disabilities 7" 159-62. First systematic study.
• Sharma, Mahesh. Dyscalculia.
• --------, 1989. Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and other Mathematics Problems. The Math Notebook, CT/LM.
• --------, "Berkshire mathematics."
• -------- and Loveless, Eugene, 1988. Dyscalculia. Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics, CT/LM.
• Campbell, Jamie I.D.,2004. "Handbook of Mathematical Cognition". Psychology Press.

External links

• DyscalculiaForum.com International support forum
• Study on neural basis of dyscalculia at the University of Barcelona (Spanish)
• Numeracy Intervention project at the University of Oxford
• dysTalk Jane Emerson explaining what dyscalculia is and how to manage it.
• CLSO-Math Concepts-Language-Symbols-Operation. An innovative math teaching methodology developed by a Harvard graduate, based on recent learning theories and decades of practical experience.
• Information on learning disabilities for ages ranging from early childhood through adulthood.
• 'The Mathematician Who Can't Add Up' by Emma J King Freeview Snapshot video by the Vega Science Trust.
• Guardian Article
• Mathematics and Dyslexia
• LD Online
• Dyscalculia or acalculia
• Dyscalculia.org Symptoms of dyscalculia
• [1]
• Drawing Stories for learning times tables Example of using visual images as a mnemonic memory technique for times tables