Abstract
Although many children with reading difficulty (RD) are reported to struggle with mathematics, little research has empirically investigated whether this is the case for different types of RD. This study examined the mathematics skills of third graders with one of two types of RD: dyslexia (n= 18) or specific reading comprehension difficulty (n= 22), as contrasted to a comparison group (n= 247). Children's performance on arithmetic fact fluency, operations, and applied problems was assessed using standardized measures. The results indicated that children with dyslexia experienced particular difficulty with arithmetic fact fluency and operations: they were 5.60 times and 8.54 times more likely than other children to experience deficits in fact fluency and operations, respectively. Our findings related to arithmetic fact fluency were more consistent with domain-general explanations of the co-morbidity between RD and mathematics difficulty, whereas our findings related to operations were more consistent with domain-specific accounts.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 639-643 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Learning and Individual Differences |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2010 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported in part by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada , the William T. Grant Foundation , and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada . The authors would also like to thank Richard Woodcock, Kevin McGrew, and Laurie Ford, for the generous use of the Woodcock–Johnson tests. Thank you to Helen Bent, Jessica Krajicek, Sabrena Jaswal, Elenita Tseng, Maggie Vukovic, and Laura Zajac, for their assistance with data collection and entry.
Keywords
- Arithmetic fact fluency
- Dyslexia
- Mathematics achievement
- Reading difficulties
