COMPUTER BASED SCREENING DYSCALCULIA: COGNITIVE AND NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATES¹

ABSTRACT

Mathematical skills are becoming increasingly critical for achieving academic and professional success. Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a childhood-onset disorder characterized by the presence of abnormalities in the acquisition of arithmetic skills affecting approximately 5% of school age children. Diagnosing students with possible dyscalculia tendencies and giving them relevant extra learning opportunities based on their specific difficulties are critically important for them to go with their peers. One of the human cognition dimensions is number. Two distinct systems of basic numerical capacities have been described: Approximate and exact number systems. Additionally, current brain imaging studies have associated this disease to structural and functional alterations corresponding to parietal and prefrontal cortices. In order to screen dyscalculia tendencies related to these two systems, we have developed five different cognitive tasks. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, a brief description of the software and the cognitive tasks will be presented. Second, a review of the findings about neural correlates of computer based cognitive tasks used for screening of dyscalculia as well as the neuro-structural and neurofunctional imaging findings in DD will be synthesized.