Ordinal processing differences between children with persistent dyscalculia and typically performing children.

Abstract

Ordinal number processing skills are important for adults and children. Recent work demonstrates that children have difficulty with judging the ordinality of sequences that are in-order but do not match the typical count-list (i.e., in-order non-adjacent sequences, such as 2-4-6). Limited evidence in the literature suggests that dyscalculic children show a similar pattern of behavior. In the present study, we sought to explicitly test the hypothesis that children with developmental dyscalculia struggle primarily with extending notions of ordinality to sequences outside of the count-list. We test this hypothesis using a sample of children with persistent developmental dyscalculia, and a comparison group of typically performing children. Both groups completed an ordinality judgment task, in which triplet sequences were judged as being in-order (e.g., 3-4-5; 2-4-6) or in mixed-order (e.g., 3-5-4; 2-6-4). In line with our prediction, results demonstrate that children with persistent developmental dyscalculia make more errors, compared to typically performing children, but only on the in-order non-adjacent trials (e.g., 2-4-6). Broadly, this finding suggests that ordinality processing abilities are impaired in children with developmental dyscalculia, and that this characteristic appears primarily in extending notions of ordinality beyond adjacent sequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).