Abstract
This study examined automatic number processing in adults with mathematical learning disabilities (MLDs). The performance of adults with MLD during an automatic symbolic and non-symbolic priming task was compared to gender-, age-, and IQ-matched controls. No difference in the priming distance effect was found between the adults with and without MLD, suggesting that adults with MLD have an intact magnitude representation. Moreover, the adults with MLD did not have problems in processing the numerical symbols 1–9, suggesting that this basic deficit which is experienced by children with MLD is resolved by adulthood.
Highlights
Sufficient basic mathematical competence has shown to be fundamental for success in daily life (Duncan et al, 2007; Reyna et al, 2009)
We examined whether adults with mathematical learning disabilities (MLDs) have (a) a deficit in the basic ability to represent numerosities, leading to difficulties in processing both symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitudes or (b) problems in accessing the number magnitude from symbols
Our results showed that the size of the symbolic and nonsymbolic priming distance effect (PDE) was comparable for adults with and without MLD
Summary
Sufficient basic mathematical competence has shown to be fundamental for success in daily life (Duncan et al, 2007; Reyna et al, 2009). The representation deficit hypothesis suggests that MLD is caused by a deficit in the innate ability to mentally represent and process numerical magnitudes, resulting in difficulties in learning about numbers and arithmetic (Dehaene, 1997; Butterworth, 2005). Evidence for this representation deficit hypothesis has mainly been accumulated in children using magnitude comparison tasks (e.g., Landerl et al, 2009; Mussolin et al, 2010b; see De Smedt et al, 2013 for a review). Mussolin et al (2010b) found that
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