Specific arithmetic calculation deficits in children with Turner syndrome.

Abstract

Study 1 compared arithmetic processing skills on the WRAT-R in 45 girls with Turner syndrome (TS) and 92 age-matched female controls. Results revealed significant underachievement by subjects with TS, which reflected their poorer performance on problems requiring the retrieval of addition and multiplication facts and procedural knowledge for addition and division operations. TS subjects did not differ qualitatively from controls in type of procedural error committed. Study 2, which compared the performance of 10 subjects with TS and 31 controls on the Keymath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test, showed that the TS group had less adequate knowledge of arithmetic, subtraction, and multiplication procedures but did not differ from controls on Fact items. Error analyses revealed that TS subjects were more likely to confuse component steps or fail to separate intermediate steps or to complete problems. TS subjects relied to a greater degree on verbal than visual-spatial abilities in arithmetic processing while their visual-spatial abilities were associated with retrieval of simple multidigit addition facts and knowledge of subtraction, multiplication, and division procedures. Differences between the TS and control groups increased with age for Keymath, but not WRAT-R, procedures. Discrepant findings are related to the different task constraints (timed vs. untimed, single vs. alternate versions, size of item pool) and the use of different strategies (counting vs. fact retrieval). It is concluded that arithmetic difficulties in females with TS are due to less adequate procedural skills, combined with poorer fact retrieval in timed testing situations, rather than to inadequate visual-spatial abilities.