Automaticity of Number Processing in Children With Mathematical Difficulties : Distance Effect on a Number Comparison Task

Abstract

The present study examined numerical processing ability in Japanese children with mathematical difficulties (N = 6), children without mathematical difficulties (N = 95), and adults (N = 11). TK-style Japanese language and mathematics diagnostic tests were used to evaluate the children's academic achievement. Numerical comparison task was administrated in order to investigate the processing speed of numerical magnitude and the distance effect, which is a phenomenon in which reaction time decreases as the numerical distance between the stimuli increases. The main results of the numerical comparison task were as follows: (a) Processing speed decreased with age. Furthermore, the children without mathematical difficulties showed the distance effect regardless of age. (b) Processing speed was slower in the children with mathematical difficulties who were in the lower grades, (c) The numerical distance effect was not seen in the participants who had slower reaction times than those of the children with mathematical difficulties who had faster reaction times. These results suggest that children with mathematical difficulties might have trouble with the representation of numerical magnitude. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)