This longitudinal study examined early cognitive risk and protective factors for Grade 2 reading disability (RD). We first examined the reading outcome of 198 children in four developmental cognitive subgroups that were identified in our previous analysis: dysfluent trajectory, declining trajectory, unexpected trajectory and typical trajectory. We…

Deficits in basic numerical processing have been identified as a central and potentially causal problem in developmental dyscalculia; however, so far not much is known about the typical and atypical development of such skills. This study assessed basic number skills cross-sectionally in 262 typically developing and 51 dyscalculic children in…

Emotional and cognitive factors were examined in 18 children with mathematical learning disabilities (MLD), compared with 18 normally achieving children, matched for chronological age, school level, gender and verbal IQ. Working memory, short-term memory, inhibitory processes, speed of processing and level of anxiety in mathematics were assessed…

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) still lacks a generally accepted definition. A major problem is that the cognitive component processes contributing to arithmetic performance are still poorly defined. By a reanalysis of our previous event-related brain potential (ERP) data (Soltesz et al., 2007) here our objective was to identify and compare…

Ordinality is--beyond numerical magnitude (i.e., quantity)--an important characteristic of the number system. There is converging empirical evidence that (intra)parietal brain regions mediate number magnitude processing. Furthermore, recent findings suggest that the human intraparietal sulcus (IPS) supports magnitude and ordinality in a…

A majority of studies on learning disabilities have focused on elementary grades. Although problems with learning disabilities are life-affecting only a few studies focus on deficits in adults. In this study adults with isolated mathematical disabilities (n = 101) and adults with combined mathematical and reading disabilities (n = 130) solved…

Forty-five children with mathematics learning disabilities, with and without comorbid reading disabilities, were compared to 45 normally achieving peers in tasks assessing basic numerical skills. Children with mathematics disabilities were only impaired when comparing Arabic digits (i.e., symbolic number magnitude) but not when comparing…

This study contrasted development of processing speed in 122 children between 7.5 and 11.8 years with learning disabilities and that of 206 nondisabled controls. No differences were found in relation to age in processing speed development in the two groups. Findings suggest that underlying etiologies for the normal developmental change in…

Compared performance of children with autism, with learning disabilities, and normally developing 4-year-olds on reasoning problems with and without instruction to use imagery. Found that instruction to use imagery led to persistent logical performance. Children with autism displayed a distinctive response pattern, performing around chance levels,…

This research review identifies similarities in skill acquisition across the domains of reading and math disabilities, specifically addressing the sequence of skill development and the theoretical question of whether the disabilities reflect delays or deficits in cognitive development. The paper discusses the nature of differences between learners…

Reports a study involving 35 learning-disabled boys attending full-time remedial schools and 35 matched normal achievers to investigate whether learning-disabled children differ from normal achievers in terms of logical thought and whether they exhibit decalages in their acquisition of Piagetian concepts. (BD/BR)

Compares and contrasts the abilities of normal and learning disabled students to abstract spelling patterns in the course of their acquisition of spelling skills. The performance of the learning disabled was significantly below that of the normal students. In addition, error analysis indicates that the responses of the learning disabled spellers…

This study explored relationship between working memory (WM) and mathematical problem solving, comparing children with learning disabilities (LD) to chronologically age-matched and younger achievement-matched children on measures of WM, phonological processing, problem-solving, and word problem-solving accuracy. Found support for notion that…

Compared reading and mathematics competencies of children with poor arithmetic fact mastery at the end of third grade to those of grade-level peers with good arithmetic fact mastery. Found that children with poor fact mastery showed little growth on timed number facts across second and third grades, despite normal growth in other mathematics…

Investigated possible priming effect of two neuropsychological tests, the Booklet Category Test (BCT) and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Obtained counterbalanced order effects on like-aged sample of 63 South African elementary school students (normally- achieving, low-functioning, learning-disabled). Found a significant effect of set-shifting…