When you don’t know that three plus six equals nine

Imagine that you are going to buy bread. Order three bars at 0.95 each. In total, 2.85 euros. He pays with a 5 dollar bill and the baker gives him back the change. He checks that he has done the laps well (2.15 euros) and goes home with the three bars under his arm. Easy, right? Well, an activity as simple and daily as going to buy bread is quite a challenge for a person suffering from dyscalculia, a learning disorder that makes it difficult to understand mathematics and that affects 6% of the population. “Go ahead, we are talking about children and adults with a normal intellectual level. What happens is that they are unable to handle with ease the most basic aspects of numerical processing and calculation. They have a hard time performing simple operations like 5 plus 4 or even understanding concepts like ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’… And I won’t even tell you if they have to add up the cost of the three loaves of bread and, in addition, calculate the turns », explains Antonio Clemente, president of the College of Speech Therapists of the Basque Country.

Although the exact causes of dyscalculia are unknown, what is clear is that it is a neurological disorder with a strong genetic component. Furthermore, it so happens that about half of dyslexic people also have problems with math. “These are children who frequently resort to their fingers to be able to carry out simple operations because they have not quite established what in the field of calculation is called recovery of arithmetic facts. That is, you know that 6 plus 6 is 12 and that 8 plus 7 is 15. And when you see that sum, you do it from memory. But these children are unable to do so and every time they are asked the sum they have to start from scratch, so they count on their fingers,” says Clemente, who treats patients with dyscalculia from very early ages: “Some of them are now engineers.

Another consequence of this disorder in learning mathematics is that when they make mistakes they are not aware. “A student who has a normally developing sense of computation is able to find the fault when he revises. If in the sum of 5 plus 4 he puts 8, when he checks the operation he realizes the error and corrects it (9), but children with dyscalculia do not know if it is right or wrong », exemplifies the president of the Basque speech therapists.

The problems with mathematics do not stop there. They also have difficulties in solving simple problems, in discriminating amounts (more, less…) and even in identifying numbers themselves. «For example, it is very difficult for them to associate the concept three, with the representation of three things and the spelling ‘3’. In other words, if you see a drawing with three trees and they ask you how many trees there are, you don’t doubt it. Three. In the case of children with dyscalculia, this association is very complex”, insists Clemente. What happens is that since they are students with normal intelligence «they try to find their compensations and some elaborate resources that are much more complicated than those used by a child who has well-established numerical concepts».

Who is the first in line?

One of the keys to “minimizing” the impact of this disorder is precisely its early identification. In this sense, once the problem has been diagnosed, «a well-regulated teaching of mathematics is recommended, with well-structured learning sequences and the use of manipulative objects that favor a deep understanding of basic mathematical concepts. This part is essential to be able to progress towards increasingly abstract concepts”, explain Javier Arroyo and Daniel González de Vega, founders of Smartick, an ‘online’ learning method for mathematics and reading, which has just designed a free test to identify just fifteen minutes to children at risk of suffering from dyscalculia.

The evaluation tests allow the mathematical capacity of minors to be assessed from a very young age (4, 5, 6 years old), although there are certain predictors that can give clues about the existence of a problem with the calculation. According to Clemente, “when they start compulsory education, they already have difficulties in solving such simple questions as: Who is the first in line? And the second? Order these numbers (2, 1, 4, 3) from highest to lowest… It is also difficult for them to understand concepts such as more and less: if a lion weighs 150 kilos, a penguin, 23, and a cow, 700, which animal weighs more? ? And understanding, which animal is heavier: the lion or the cow?

These difficulties go beyond the school environment, since they are people who do not get the amounts right, have problems with money… «They have a very bad time when they have to make the purchase because they get very involved with prices and returns. They don’t usually like board games either… It is a disorder that has very important consequences on the self-esteem of those who suffer from it, “experts agree.

The good news is that it is a problem that can be tackled from a very young age, with specific ‘training’. «Dyscalculia will always be there, but they learn resources to compensate for their difficulty with numbers and come out on top. One of my patients, a university professor, is capable of solving very complex problems, but don’t ask him what 8 plus 7 is because he doesn’t know how to do it without counting on his fingers », reveals Antonio Clemente.