Dyscalculia: A Quick Look

What you should know about dyscalculia

• Dyscalculia refers to a wide range of learning difficulties involving math skills.
• There is no single form of dyscalculia - difficulties can vary from person to person and can change throughout a lifetime.
• Two major areas of weakness that are responsible for learning disabilities in math are
  • Visual-spatial difficulties - which result in a person having trouble processing what the eye sees
  • Language processing difficulty - which result in a person having trouble processing and making sense of what the ear hears.
• Like all learning disabilities, dyscalculia is a life-long challenge.
• Using alternate learning methods, people with dyscalculia can learn how to achieve success.

Dyscalculia: Warning signs by age

Young children

• Difficulty learning to count
• Trouble recognizing printed numbers
• Difficulty tying together the idea of a number (4) and how it exists in the world (4 horses, 4 cars, 4 children)
• Poor memory for numbers
• Trouble organizing things in a logical way - putting round objects in one place and square ones in another

School-age children

• Trouble learning math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division)
• Difficulty developing math problem-solving skills
• Poor long term memory for math functions
• Not familiar with math vocabulary
• Difficulty measuring things
• Avoiding games that require strategy

Teenagers & adults

• Difficulty estimating costs like groceries bills
• Difficulty learning math concepts beyond the basic math facts
• Poor ability to budget or balance a checkbook
• Trouble with concepts of time, such as sticking to a schedule or approximating time
• Trouble with mental math
• Difficulty finding different approaches to one problem

If a person continues to display difficulty over time the areas outlined above, testing for dyscalculia should be considered.