dysTalk Dyscalculia Symptoms - Talks - dysTalk

About the speaker: Jane Emerson, the founder of Emerson House, is a speech and language therapist with more than 25 years' experience of working with children. She is an expert in dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Further information about this Talk

To purchase Jane Emerson's book "The Dyscalculia Assessment", click here.

For more information about Emerson House please click here.

Key Points covered in This talk:

• What are the dyscalculia symptoms?: The dyscalculic children don't have much sense of number and their sense of number is very ones based: They see the number four as the number that comes after three. They do not see patterns in numbers or connections between them. A key dyscalculia symptom is that when they do maths dyscalculics do everything by counting in ones (e.g. if you ask a child with dyscalculia what is two and three they might actually count up to five to get the answer - there is no sense that if they know 2+2 is 4 then 2+3 will be one more and therefore they go back to counting in ones). Those with dyscalculia don't really get the concept of multiplication or division. For example they would get very confused if you asked how many groups of three you can see on the table - they can't understand the concept of having several items in one group. It takes dyscalculics a lot of practice to understand that multiplication is counting in groups.
• The effects of dyscalculia: One of the main effects is that anxiety builds up and self-esteem goes down and these children often sit in classrooms not really understanding very much at all. As a result they often get left behind in class. Learning from peers is difficult because those with dyscalculia struggle to understand or remember. Then they begin to cover up, even becoming disruptive or the class clown in order to get attention to survive in class and to avoid facing the maths. It is therefore very important to provide help as soon as possible.