Magnitude processing in populations with spina-bifida: The role of visuospatial and working memory processes.
Kids with spina bifida struggle with non-symbolic magnitude comparisons partly because of weak visuospatial and working memory skills—target these capacities when teaching math concepts.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Attout et al. (2020) watched kids with spina bifida do quick size, time, and dot-guess tasks.
They also gave short memory games that need holding pictures or numbers in mind.
The team wanted to know if weak visual or working memory explains why these kids struggle with ‘how much’ problems.
What they found
The children with spina bifida were slower and less accurate on every non-symbolic task.
They still read and wrote numbers fine, so the trouble was not with digits themselves.
Poor visual sketch-pad and working-memory scores explained part of the gap.
How this fits with other research
Belacchi et al. (2014) saw the same link in Down syndrome: visuospatial memory predicted addition estimates, not verbal memory.
Carati et al. (2024) later showed kids with developmental dyscalculia also misjudge short beeps, proving the ‘how much’ weakness jumps from eyes to ears.
Yang et al. (2016) looked the other way: kids with dyslexia bombed exact addition yet kept their approximate number sense intact.
Together the four papers draw a map—some groups lose the nose for amount everywhere, others only lose the fine print.
Why it matters
If you teach a learner with spina bifida, do not drill only math facts.
First build the visual shelf space: use blocks, number lines, and short memory games that ask kids to hold and move pictures in mind.
Keep symbolic work short so the memory load stays light.
These quick tweaks turn the assessment finding into a treatment plan.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
People with Spina Bifida usually experience difficulties with mathematics. In a series of other developmental disorders, a magnitude processing deficit was considered to be the main source of subsequent difficulties in mathematics. The processing of magnitude could be numerical (which is the larger number) or non-numerical such as spatial (e.g., which is the longer?) or temporal (which one last longer?) for instance. However, no study yet has examined directly magnitude processes in a population with Spina Bifida. On the other hand, recent studies in people with genetic syndromes have suggested that visuospatial and working memory processes play an important role in magnitude processing, including number magnitude. Therefore, in this study we explored for the first time magnitude representation using several tasks with different visuospatial and working memory processing requirements, cognitive skills frequently impaired in Spina Bifida. Results showed children with SB presented a global magnitude processing deficit for non-numerical and numerical comparison tasks, but not in symbolic number magnitude tasks compared to controls. Importantly, visuospatial skills and working memory abilities could partially explain the differences between groups in comparison and estimation tasks. This study proposes that magnitude processing difficulties in children with SB could be due to higher cognitive factors such as visuospatial and working memory processes.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103655