Math Difficulties Explained

Cognitive Skills Required for Math

Dyscalculia is dyslexia in math, an unexpected difficulty in understanding numbers, an inability to automate the processes of math.

Like reading disabilities, math disabilities may have multiple causes and dimensions. Moreover, as the math curriculum has changed over the last ten to fifteen years, more emphasis has been placed on communicating math ideas, interpreting data from charts and figures, and estimating. These changes mean that cognitive deficits in any area are more likely to impact performance in math as getting by with rote learning is no longer possible.

There are two basic categories of deficit in math ability:

Language based
Semantic memory is what enables us to remember words, meanings and concepts, as opposed to specific events. Individuals with language processing deficits are likely to have difficulty retrieving arithmetic facts, manifesting a high error rate and/or a variable (often slow) retrieval rate. These individuals may also fail to recognize math symbols (e.g., operations signs) and may have trouble grasping the meaning of different operations.

Procedural
Being able to identify a pattern, discriminate similarities and differences, and execute a familiar series of steps in a procedure relate directly to underlying cognitive skills, such as sequential visual or auditory memory, working memory, logic and reasoning, and attention skills.

Math Automaticity Is Essential

For most children, reading is a language processing problem, often not evident in their spoken language. This is because reading requires much more accurate listening.

In the same way that beginning readers must recognize that words are composed of sounds which are abstract units (phonemic awareness), math competency is founded on a sense of numbers as discrete but connected entities in a sequence. The issue, much like phonemic awareness in reading, is one of automaticity. Because the human mind has a limited ability to process information consciously, basic facts must become automatic. If, for example, an individual needs to work consciously on combining sounds into a word or to conclude that 7+8 equals 15 fifteen (such as counting on fingers), then little room or energy is left for understanding concepts.

In the 1980s, when educators concluded that students needed to develop automaticity with math facts so that attention resources could be devoted to higher-order thinking, math drills became a common approach in order to drive math facts into Semantic memory. This �drill and kill� approach did produce some results on performance on tests, but did little for the development of number sense.

An alternative approach to developing automaticity is to develop basic cognitive skills such as those described above as a precursor and complement to working on math facts. The automaticity enabled by increasing these skills, combined with the enhancement of concept formation should yield dramatically better results than an exclusive focus on math fact drills. Some of the core deficits described earlier are easily identified as the skills that can be enhanced via cognitive skills therapy, especially working memory and processing speed.

How Gemm Learning Helps Math Performance

Improvement of basic cognitive skills holds significant promise for improving math ability. The potential for this approach is particularly attractive given the movement away from math fact fluency drills at school in favor of math concept instruction that require higher functioning cognitive skills.

By developing the underlying cognitive skills that allow the brain to process more information with more automaticity, our cognitive program, Fast ForWord can provide math help by improving key mathematical capacity and understanding by improving working memory, sequencing and underlying language and learning skills, all critical to math development. Our CT and NY learning centers use math exercises with tutor support, using the FASTT Math program which builds basic math fact fluency. We provide FASTT Math at home and Fast ForWord at home.
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