The componential nature of school mathematics and associative cognitive factors: The case of young children with mathematical learning disabilities

The current understanding of mathematical and numerical processes indicates that mathematical abilities are not singular. Instead, they consist of multiple components that can be linked to various domain-general abilities. We used network analysis to test the componential nature of school mathematics and the effect of mathematical proficiency on the relations between mathematical tasks. Two groups of typically developing children (TD, N = 64, 40 females, mean age = 9.87) and children with mathematical learning disabilities (MD, N = 64, 47 females, mean age = 9.87) were tested.

Most of the mathematical subjects were closely related. These results suggest that most school mathematical tasks are strongly associated, especially in TD children. Among MDs, we found a more diverse network, with comparison and number line estimation partly separate from other mathematical topics, and negatively associated with reading, thus indicating that number comparison and number line estimation is a focus of weakness in children suffering from MD. These results suggest that most of the school mathematical tasks are strongly associated, especially in TD children. Across groups, it was also discovered that verbal working memory was strongly linked to reading and non-numerical fluency, hence, the connections between mathematical subject matters and reading or non-numerical fluency could be explain by the shared correlation with verbal working memory. Hence, among all the domain-general factors, only verbal working memory was directly associated with mathematics.