Dyscalculia: Functional Impact, Causes, Signs, and Treatment

Dyscalculia

            Dyscalculia is a learning difficulty that impedes an individual's ability to do basic arithmetic like addition, division, subtraction, and multiplication. People who have this condition often take longer when working on mathematical problems than people without the disease. Further, people with this condition are more prone to mistakes in their calculations. While all people can struggle with different mathematical problems, those with dyscalculia struggle to a greater extent, and these difficulties are poised to persist over time. The condition is also the same as mathematics anxiety, but people who have it react strongly to activities that involve mathematics problems. Children, for instance, can get frustrated and upset when playing board games that require some arithmetic reasoning. Studies indicate that up to 6% of the global population have the condition (Lewis et al., 2020), that the members are heterogeneous because of variability in working memory (Cárdenas et al., 2021), and are not well documented beyond mathematical problem (Vigna et al., 2022). Therefore, the current paper aims to increase awareness of this condition and its impact on day-to-day life activities and interactions.

            In this regard, the paper will first dwell on the conceptualization of the condition in which different hypotheses are discussed. This will then be followed by an attempt to establish the causes or the risk factors that the 6% of the global population was exposed to for the condition to occur. A literature review will break down current literature about the topic, which will then be connected with a relevant policy or technological development that relates to the topic. This approach aims to provide a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the condition, its manifestation, and treatment.

Condition Conceptualization

            Today, the core deficit of developmental dyscalculia (DD) remains unknown, but several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the conditions. These include the Number of Sense Deficit and Access Deficit Hypotheses (Wong et al., 2017). According to the number sense deficit hypothesis, the core deficit of DD lies in an individual's inability to represent or interpret nonsymbolic numerosity such as the number of objects in a set or the size or height of objects. Number sense occurs when students connect numbers with experiences in the real world. In students with DD, this differentiation is difficult according to this hypothesis. On the other hand, the access deficit theory posits that the origin of this condition is the inability to associate or link numbers correctly with the underlying represented magnitude. Wong et al. (2017) argue that neither of the hypotheses is superior to another because of the lack of evidence of their success and the heterogeneous ...