Dyscalculia

What is dyscalculia?

Dyscalculia is a term referring to a wide range of life-long learning disabilities involving math. There is no single form of math disability, and difficulties vary from person to person and affect people differently in school and throughout life.

What are the effects of dyscalculia?

Since disabilities involving math can be so different, the effects they have on a person's development can be just as different. For instance, a person who has trouble processing language will face different challenges in math than a person who has difficulty with visual- spatial relationships. Another person with trouble remembering facts and keeping a sequence of steps in order will have yet a different set of math-related challenges to overcome.

Early Childhood:

Building a solid foundation in math involves many different skills. Young children with learning disabilities can have difficulty learning the meaning of numbers (number sense), trouble with tasks like sorting objects by shape, size or color; recognizing groups and patterns; and comparing and contrasting using concepts like smaller/bigger or taller/shorter. Learning to count, recognizing numbers and matching numbers with amounts can also be difficult for these children.

School-Age Children:

As math learning continues, school-age children with language processing disabilities may have difficulty solving basic math problems using addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They struggle to remember and retain basic math facts (i.e. times tables), and have trouble figuring out how to apply their knowledge and skills to solve math problems.

Difficulties may also arise because of weakness in visual-spatial skills, where a person may understand the needed math facts, but have difficulty putting them down on paper in an organized way. Visual-spatial difficulties can also make understanding what is written on a board or in a textbook challenging.

Teenagers & Adults:

If basic math facts are not mastered, many teenagers and adults with dyscalculia may have difficulty moving on to more advanced math applications. Language processing disabilities can make it hard for a person to get a grasp of the vocabulary of math. Without the proper vocabulary and a clear understanding of what the words represent, it is difficult to build on math knowledge.

Success in more advanced math procedures requires that a person be able to follow multi-step procedures. For individuals with learning disabilities, it may be hard to visualize patterns, different parts of a math problem or identify critical information needed to solve equations and more complex problems.

What are the warning signs?

Since math disabilities are varied, the signs that a person may have a difficulty in this area can be just as varied. However, having difficulty learning math skills does not necessarily mean a person has a learning disability. All students learn at different paces, and particularly among young people, it takes time and practice for formal math procedures to make practical sense.