Abstract
Individuals with Mathematics Learning Disabilities have persistent mathematics underperformance but vary with respect to their cognitive profiles. The present study examined mathematics ability and achievement, and associated mathematics-specific numerical skills and domain-general cognitive abilities, in young children with Turner syndrome compared to their matched peers. We utilized two independent peer groups so that group comparisons would account for verbal skills, a hypothesized strength of girls with Turner syndrome, and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison skills, a hypothesized difference of girls with Turner syndrome. This individual matching approach afforded characterization of mathematics profiles of girls with Turner syndrome and girls without Turner syndrome that share potential key features of the Turner syndrome phenotype. Results indicated differences in mathematics ability and nonsymbolic magnitude comparison tasks between girls with Turner syndrome and peers with similar levels of verbal skill. Mathematics ability and mathematics achievement scores of girls with Turner syndrome did not differ significantly from their peers with similar levels of accuracy on a nonsymbolic magnitude comparison task. Cognitive correlates of mathematics outcomes showed disparate patterns across groups. These quantitative and qualitative differences across profiles enhance our understanding of variation in mathematics ability in early childhood and inform how mathematics skills develop in young children with or without Turner syndrome.
Highlights
We hypothesized that girls with Turner syndrome (TS) would, on average, have average to high-average verbal skills, consistent with verbal strengths reported for girls and women with TS at all ages (e.g., [16, 44]). This may lead young girls with TS to have a verbal advantage over matched peers with similar levels of magnitude comparison (MCN) skills, and we proposed that verbal skills would be positively correlated with mathematics achievement to a greater degree among girls with TS relative to their peers
The relation, though moderate in size, did not reach significance when controlling for multiple correlations; correlations of this magnitude between the verbal composite and WJ-III AP scores were observed in all three groups. Complementing these findings, the exploratory regression analysis showed the Verbal composite score accounted for unique variance in mathematics achievement among girls with TS. These findings provide some initial support for the hypothesis that verbal skills may contribute to variability in early childhood mathematics achievement in girls we TS in a manner not observed among their peers with similar low MCN scores, and consistent with other children who have a modest verbal strength
For instance, include sequential MCN trials on our MCN task like the one that Attout and colleagues used with their older participants with TS [35], so we cannot address whether increasing EF demands in an MCN task would lead to even more pronounced MCN differences in young girls with TS compared to their peers, nor comment more precisely on how spatial working memory contributes to our overall findings. These questions extend beyond our study aims to better understand the roles that MCN and verbal skills play in the TS phenotype, and how MCN, verbal, and EF skill profiles differ between children with or without TS
Summary
The primary aim of the present study was to examine profiles of domain-specific and domain-general cognitive skills, characterizing the relation between these cognitive skills and mathematics achievement outcomes and how these relations vary across children with TS and children that share a specific feature of the TS cognitive phenotype. We aimed to identify whether correlations among these skills differ when examined among children with TS compared to children without TS from a matched-comparison group, which would suggest group differences in the skills or strategies that support young children’s early mathematical thinking or achievement. The purpose of the current study was to examine the cognitive phenotype of young girls with TS as it pertains to their mathematical skills. We did not combine the TEMA-3, WJ-III AP, and MCN scores because our aim was to examine patterns of variance and covariance across these performance indices related to mathematical thinking and achievement
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