Verschillen tussen kinderen met dyscalculie en kinderen zonder rekenproblemen op het gebied van de executieve functies planning, aandacht en werkgeheugen, benoemsnelheid en leesvaardigheid

Abstract

Children with dyscalculia experience severe mathematical learning difficulties. Compared to knowledge about dyslexia, knowledge about dyscalculia and its underlying cognitive deficits is still scarce. This study investigated the differences in executive functioning, naming speed en reading abilities between twenty children with dyscalculia, age matched controls, and math performance matched controls (age 75-185 months). Tasks containing numerical information as well as tasks containing non-numerical information were used. Furthermore, the relationships between executive functioning, naming speed and math performance were examined in a part of the control sample, and it was investigated whether the relationship between naming speed and math performance was mediated by the executive functions. Results indicated that children with dyscalculia performed worse than age matched controls on the numerical and non-numerical naming speed and planning tasks and on the numerical attention task. Furthermore, children with dyscalculia performed worse than age matched controls in reading non-words but not in reading real words. No difference was found between children with dyscalculia and age matched controls on the non-numerical attention task and the four non-numerical working memory tasks. Significant positive correlations were found between planning, attention, naming speed and math performance. The relationship between naming speed and math performance was strongly mediated by planning and attention. Summarized, the results implicate that children with dyscalculia have specific numerical impairments in attention and general impairments in planning and naming speed.