News from the web:

What’s the difference between a person who sucks at maths and a person who has dyscalculia?

Yes, all symptoms described sound suspiciously like “sucking at math”. I also wonder how someone diagnosed with both dyscalculia and dyslexia can be “anywhere on an IQ scale” under any possible definition when the subject can’t understand a clock, learn words or tell right from left (which happens to be “caused by both dyscalculia AND dyslexia”). Next thing is IQ-ia, people who also are range from extremely bright to plain stupid, but have only this nasty handicap of just performing really bad at IQ tests. This article needs more proof that there is a difference between suffering from dyscalculia and simply being stupid. The absence of a correlation between dyscalculia and dyslexia would do the trick, but unfortunately dyslexia explicitly states they do correlate. My guess is that dysmusica, dislaboria, dischessica, dissuccessfulia and probably even dysgymnastia also have a strong correlation to dyscalculia. (dyslexia does have a controversy section

Clearly dyscalculia has not been as thoroughly studied as dyslexia. If there is a statistical correlation between the two, I suspect it is because there are a number of people who suffer from both. But there are also large numbers of people who only suffer from one or the other. And apparently many of these people who find certain basic math tasks difficult nevertheless have normal intelligence in other math areas (and in non-math areas) and can do quite well in those areas of math not affected by dyscalculia (e.g. problems not requiring rapid recall of math facts). Children with dyscalculia do not “suck at math,” they only struggle with certain areas of math. These people have normal or even high IQ scores in spite of their difficulties in a few specific areas. I am not an expert, but I believe, for example, that reasoning skills are not affected by dyscalculia. Since IQ tests are based on reasoning skills, and not recall of the multiplication table, IQ scores for dyscalculia sufferers can be quite normal. Is not dyscalculia defined as a condition causing difficulty in certain areas of math in spite of normal IQ? In any case, no one is challenging IQ test validity or suggesting IQ-ia. I know some experts suspect a short-term memory problem as part of the cause of dyscalculia. I wish we knew more. This article still needs a lot of work, but I suspect there are not enough qualified people to contribute to it. This is a reflection of our state of knowledge about this condition. 

Read all about it HERE

Visit us at Dyscalculia Headlines
A service from Math and Dyscalculia Services