Developmental dyscalculia and low numeracy in Chinese children.
Dyscalculia and low numeracy are two different holes; plug the right one early.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Chan et al. (2013) tested Chinese first-graders who had two different math labels.
One group had dyscalculia. The other group had low numeracy.
Kids did two kinds of number tasks: non-symbolic (dot clouds) and symbolic (written digits).
What they found
Dyscalculia kids failed only the dot tasks.
Low-numeracy kids failed only the digit tasks.
The two problems stayed separate, even at age six.
How this fits with other research
Gomez et al. (2015) looked at UK kids with DCD. Those kids failed both dot and digit tasks.
The papers seem to clash, but they don’t. Lan studied pure math disorders. Alice studied a motor disorder that also hits math.
Lanfranchi et al. (2022) tested Down syndrome learners. Their number-line scores matched their mental age, not their diagnosis.
Together the studies say: check the task type and the child’s profile, not just the label.
Why it matters
You can’t use one math screener for every child. If a client struggles with dot tasks, target non-symbolic sense. If they bomb digit tasks, drill symbolic numbers. Don’t wait for the gap to close on its own; the Lan study shows it won’t.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children struggle with mathematics for different reasons. Developmental dyscalculia and low numeracy - two kinds of mathematical difficulties - may have their roots, respectively, in poor understanding of exact non-symbolic numerosities and of symbolic numerals. This study was the first to explore whether Chinese children, despite cultural and linguistic factors supporting their mathematical learning, also showed such mathematical difficulties and whether such difficulties have measurable impact on children's early school mathematical performance. First-graders, classified as dyscalculia, low numeracy, or normal achievement, were compared for their performance in various school mathematical tasks requiring a grasp of non-symbolic numerosities (i.e., non-symbolic tasks) or an understanding of symbolic numerals (i.e., symbolic tasks). Children with dyscalculia showed poorer performance than their peers in non-symbolic tasks but not symbolic ones, whereas those with low numeracy showed poorer performance in symbolic tasks but not non-symbolic ones. As hypothesized, these findings suggested that dyscalculia and low numeracy were distinct deficits and caused by deficits in non-symbolic and symbolic processing, respectively. These findings went beyond prior research that only documented generally low mathematical achievements for these two groups of children. Moreover, these deficits appeared to be persistent and could not be remedied simply through day-to-day school mathematical learning. The present findings highlighted the importance of tailoring early learning support for children with these distinct deficits, and pointed to future directions for the screening of such mathematical difficulties among Chinese children.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.01.030