Memory as a factor in the computational efficiency of dyslexic children with high abstract reasoning ability

Abstract

Some research suggests that dyslexic children have adequate skills in mathematics, while some investigators have found high positive correlations between reading ability and arithmetic ability. This study was an attempt to investigate why dyslexic children who appear to have mathematical potential do not perform as well as their non-dyslexic counterparts. The idea was born in a school for dyslexic children when a small group of fourth grade boys were preparing to make a three-dimensional model. Some engineering graph paper was being distributed to a group of six boys, and before the teacher had reached the sixth boy, an interval of no more than twelve seconds, the first boy called out excitedly that there were 28,000 little squares on his sheet of paper. He was correct, and his findings were soon confirmed by the rest of the group. Was this boy an "average" fourth grade student? At this time the student was reading at a 2.3 level, had a spelling score of 2.0, and his handwriting efficiency was below the second grade level. On the Wide Range Arithmetic Test (Level 1) he had recently scored at a 4.5 level, an adequate performance for an average fourth-grader in the middle of the school year. It was obvious, however, that this boy was not average in his spatial skill, abstract reasoning or ability to calculate and count. Why then did he perform as an average child on standardized tests? His actual knowledge went beyond the skills he had been taught, but there was no provision for demonstrating this on the test. There were errors in simple written algorithms, and in conversation the boy himself acknowledged that he found it hard to "remember things."