| The field of learning disabilities has focused research efforts mainly on reading and language problems. Following some of the methods from the literature on reading disabilities, an investigation of the cognitive skills underlying mathematics achievement was designed. The tasks included were intended to measure the children's semantic and working memory skills with various stimuli (digit names--auditorally and visually, familiar words, pronounceable non-words, spatial location, and memory for digits during a concurrent counting task). Also included was an assessment of strategy use when performing simple addition and articulation time tasks for each type of verbal stimulus. The current study compares memory performance on a variety of tasks, articulation speed and addition strategy use of children with mathematic disabilities (MD) and academically normal (AN) children and investigates the relationships among the dependent measures.; The skills of 66 third grade children (26 math disabled (MD) and 40 academically normal) were measured. Memory span measures were obtained for digits (auditorally and visually), words, pronounceable non-words, spatial locations and digits with a concurrent counting task. Articulation times for the verbal stimuli were obtained. A variety of statistical methods were employed to test the hypotheses; including ANOVAs, discriminant analysis, and multiple regression/correlation analysis.; The results indicated that the MD children in this study displayed a general working memory deficit. Limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research offered. |
