Study On Cognitive Diagnosis Of Primary Pupils Mathematical Disability

Mathematical disability(MD),refers to an individual who demonstrates observant low grades in math levels and state of arithmetic difficulties compared to his same age group under the conditions of:(1)No obvious differences in mental intelligence,motivation,living and educational environment;(2) No obvious deficiencies in eyesight,hearing and neural systems.In recent years,MD has been arousing researchers' great interest and attachment.At present,there are two kinds of methods on the diagnosis of MD.The traditional ability-achievement discrepancy model only attaches importance to "difference", so it has little meaningful to intervention and correction,and it is easy to cause "misdiagnosis";the cognitive- intervention model emphasizes the measurement of cognitive traits,while,it ignores "difference".Based on systemic analysis,this study combined the two models,firstly,screening out the math difficulty children through "difference criteria",and secondly,diagnosing out the MD children through cognitive measures from math difficulty children.Prior to previous research,this study emphases not only "difference criteria",but "exclusion criteria";not only difference in math achievement,but in cognitive processing traits.Based on the literature analysis,this study selects several most important cognitive traits in MD research.It includes short term memory,working memory(working memory span, visuo-spatial,executive function,and phonological loop),processing speed and problem solving ability.The test groups are sampled from children with developmental at Grade three of elementary,being divided into two groups(the experiment group and the comparison group),combining achievement and teacher's recommendation,the two groups are chosen with matching physiological,intelligence level and educational environment.We gave these children 13 cognitive measures including:short term memory,dyscalculia span,visual imagery,spatial forward and backward,graphic matching,stroop counting,counting span, partial-global conversion,phonological processing ability,computing task,number copying, digit reasoning and mental arithmetic.These experiments involve four forms: pencil-and-paper test,computer measuring,manual operation and oral report.The results are recorded by the objects' response in both reaction time and accuracy.This study,using correlation analysis and regression analysis,explores the cognitive influencing factors of maths ability and the prediction effect;at the same time,this study, using cluster analysis,diagnosed the MD children from maths difficulty,and divided the MD children into 8 groups according cognitive traits.The mostly conclusions of this study are as follows:(1) Excluding the obvious differences in mental intelligence,motivation,living and educational environment,the cognitive traits can predict math-learning ability.This study shows the children's short term memory,working memory span,visuo-spatial ability, processing speed,problem solving ability and executive function can predict children's math-learning ability.The MD children show these defect cognitive characters,among which the executive function is the MD children's core flaw;more than 90%MD children have the defect of executive function.Executive function has no direct effect to MD,while,it plays indirect role in MD through other cognitive traits.(2) Different subtype MD children show different cognitive defects and most MD children show more than one defect,but several defects overplay.