Dyscalculia

It has been an accepted fact for many years that among all the school subjects, math is the most difficult. The reasons for the difficulty have not been well-known. Difficulty with math was generally attributed to a lack of intelligence and to a smaller extent, a lack of effort. That it could also be due to inappropriate teaching was a fact which was never even voiced!

In the last 2 decades, the reason for such difficulty in math has also been attributed to a clinical condition called Dyscalculia. The condition of Dyslexia, a language learning difficulty was well known and Dyscalculia was seen as its math equivalent.

But till the last few years, there was very little scientific evidence as to the causes or even the very existence of this condition.

One of the main difficulties has been that student performance in math has been low all over the world and the causes for this has never been clear. It has been attributed to ineffective teaching, parental background, innate intelligence of the student etc. But there has been no consensus. So no clear road-map has emerged to improve math performance in schools. As a corollary there was no consensus in an issue like Dyscalculia.

But the recent advances in neuroscience & learning have started throwing some light. Researchers have tracked this condition to an area at the back of the brain called IPS (Intra-parietal sulcus). IPS is said to be related to our ability to identify & discriminate between small quantities by sight. We have seen this ability in earlier chapters under the name “number sense”.

Dr B Butterworth, author of “The Mathematical Brain” suggests that there seems to be a “numerosity module” in our brain specialised for dealing with numerical representations and that the underlying cause of dyscalculia is likely to be related to dysfunction of this system.

Math & Language Abilities

There seems to be consensus among scientists, however, that only humans mentally represent numbers precisely and with symbols, and that we need some kind of education to do so. This is potentially because many higher math skills, including arithmetic, depend on the use of language—a symbols-based system—where quantity-based judgments are pre-verbal.

Indeed, arithmetic is difficult to do if one does not have the language for it. It has also been seen that dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD occur together. It is quite logical that dyslexia could affect math learning as a lot of math learning is related to language.

But dyscalculia does not seem to affect general mental condition & abilities. Most dyscalculic students will have cognitive and language abilities in the normal range and may indeed excel in nonmathematical subjects.

Researchers also feel that initial pre-math experiences at home and an emphasis on inculcating number sense in the early primary school could mitigate the effects of this condition. If Dyscalculia is not detected in the pre-school stage and rectified by the primary school, it may be too late to do any remediation.

Scientists hope that a deeper understanding of the condition would help in early diagnosis and interventions.

Educating Students with Dyscalculia

In Ireland, Flávia Santos’s group, at the University of Dublin, has been exploring how the interconnectedness of math and music might be used to help kids with dyscalculia. Neuroscience research supports the idea that there are correlations between math and music in terms of common brain areas activated during relevant activities.

Children with Dyscalculia will have difficulty in understanding numerical quantities, remembering their names & in comparing any two given numbers. They can usually learn the sequence of counting words but may have difficulty navigating back and forth, especially in 2s, 3s, or more. They may also find it especially difficult to translate between number words whose powers of 10 are expressed by new names, such as "ten," "hundred," or "thousand" and numerals whose powers of 10 are expressed by the same numerals but in terms of place value, such as 10, 100, and 1,000.

The entire edifice of math is built on successive scaffolding of concepts built of these basic skills & concepts. Hence the learning difficulties of such children will continuously increase as they go to higher classes.

Criticality of Number Sense in Math Education

In his article “Number Sense: the most important mathematical concept in 21st Century K-12 education “mathematician Keith Devlin underlines the importance of number sense for mastering concepts of math and as a corollary for 21stcentury K-12 education.

The article can be accessed at <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/number-sense-the-most-important-mathematical-concept_us_58695887e4b068764965c2e0">https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/number-sense-the-most-important-mathematical-concept_us_58695887e4b068764965c2e0</a>

A lot more research is needed to understand the reasons for and the effect of dyscalculia on math learning.