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Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies

The clinical profile termed developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a fundamental disability affecting children already prior to arithmetic schooling, but the formal diagnosis is often only made during school years. The manifold associated deficits depend on age, education, developmental stage, and task r...

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Autores principales: Siemann, Julia, Petermann, Franz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5917196/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29725316
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00571
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author Siemann, Julia
Petermann, Franz
author_facet Siemann, Julia
Petermann, Franz
author_sort Siemann, Julia
collection PubMed
description The clinical profile termed developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a fundamental disability affecting children already prior to arithmetic schooling, but the formal diagnosis is often only made during school years. The manifold associated deficits depend on age, education, developmental stage, and task requirements. Despite a large body of studies, the underlying mechanisms remain dubious. Conflicting findings have stimulated opposing theories, each presenting enough empirical support to remain a possible alternative. A so far unresolved question concerns the debate whether a putative innate number sense is required for successful arithmetic achievement as opposed to a pure reliance on domain-general cognitive factors. Here, we outline that the controversy arises due to ambiguous conceptualizations of the number sense. It is common practice to use early number competence as a proxy for innate magnitude processing, even though it requires knowledge of the number system. Therefore, such findings reflect the degree to which quantity is successfully transferred into symbols rather than informing about quantity representation per se. To solve this issue, we propose a three-factor account and incorporate it into the partly overlapping suggestions in the literature regarding the etiology of different DD profiles. The proposed view on DD is especially beneficial because it is applicable to more complex theories identifying a conglomerate of deficits as underlying cause of DD.
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spelling pubmed-59171962018-05-03 Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies Siemann, Julia Petermann, Franz Front Psychol Psychology The clinical profile termed developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a fundamental disability affecting children already prior to arithmetic schooling, but the formal diagnosis is often only made during school years. The manifold associated deficits depend on age, education, developmental stage, and task requirements. Despite a large body of studies, the underlying mechanisms remain dubious. Conflicting findings have stimulated opposing theories, each presenting enough empirical support to remain a possible alternative. A so far unresolved question concerns the debate whether a putative innate number sense is required for successful arithmetic achievement as opposed to a pure reliance on domain-general cognitive factors. Here, we outline that the controversy arises due to ambiguous conceptualizations of the number sense. It is common practice to use early number competence as a proxy for innate magnitude processing, even though it requires knowledge of the number system. Therefore, such findings reflect the degree to which quantity is successfully transferred into symbols rather than informing about quantity representation per se. To solve this issue, we propose a three-factor account and incorporate it into the partly overlapping suggestions in the literature regarding the etiology of different DD profiles. The proposed view on DD is especially beneficial because it is applicable to more complex theories identifying a conglomerate of deficits as underlying cause of DD. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5917196/ /pubmed/29725316 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00571 Text en Copyright © 2018 Siemann and Petermann. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Siemann, Julia
Petermann, Franz
Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title_full Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title_fullStr Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title_full_unstemmed Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title_short Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies
title_sort innate or acquired? – disentangling number sense and early number competencies
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5917196/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29725316
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00571
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