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October 5, 2011 in Nation/World
Math disability studies may solve a problem
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Can’t calculate a tip or even balance your checkbook?
Take heart; maybe you can blame your brain – specifically, the parietal cortex in the top back part of the head. And it could be a problem that has roots not in a failed arithmetic or “new math” lesson, but even earlier.
Recent findings indicate that how well 3-year-olds estimate quantities predicts their math ability in elementary school. Another study funded by the National Institutes of Health showed that the innate capacity to estimate is impaired in children who have a math learning disability.
The findings are so new that there’s no widely accepted way to diagnose what’s known as dyscalculia nor any set strategies for coping with it – even though 5 percent to 8 percent of the population is thought to suffer from a math learning disability. Consider it the mathematical partner to dyslexia, which impairs reading ability.
But while researchers have explored causes of dyslexia and developed strategies for compensating, the study of dyscalculia lags about 30 years behind. As a result, many people remain stymied by math. And math dysfunction is socially accepted.
“I hate math so much,” said Juan Mendoza, 21. He has taken intermediate algebra six times at San Jose City College but has always dropped out partway. Finally, a teacher explained formulas in an understandable way. Just like he’s overcome his dyslexia, he said, maybe researchers will find a way to better teach differently wired brains.
The ability to estimate is an oft-tapped skill that, for example, helps waiting shoppers determine which checkout line is likely to move faster at the grocery store. And understanding the cause of the disability could lead to identifying children at risk of failing math and developing ways to help them.
“Children are being considered lazy or unmotivated, or not to have potential, when in fact they have a disability in processing numbers,” said Michele M.M. Mazzocco, the lead researcher on the studies. “We need to learn how this can be overcome.”
Mazzocco and colleagues at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore began tracking 249 kindergartners in public schools in 1997. She found large differences in children’s estimation skills. Even as ninth-graders, some who viewed a set of colored dots flashed briefly on a screen found it difficult to estimate the number consistently, or to distinguish quantities, such as 20 dots from 15 dots.
To tell how many dots we see or to compare quantities, the brain taps into its “approximate number system.” Mazzocco found that students in the bottom 10 percent of math achievement lagged in those estimation skills. But that doesn’t apply to everyone who “doesn’t get” math; the study found that children in the bottom 11 percent to 25 percent had no problem with estimation.
What dyscalculic children lack is “number sense,” something that most people take for granted but is a construct that can’t always be taught. “You can’t just tell somebody that 8 is more than 4,” Mazzocco said. “It’s not like memorizing states and their capitals.”
Just like dyslexics, children suffering from dyscalculia may be intelligent, she said. “They are processing information differently.”
More research could lead to ways to help people who struggle with math, said Daniel Ansari, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario.
Ansari’s studies have shown that children with dyscalculia don’t activate the parietal cortex, which is critical for number processing, in the same way that other children do. Researchers still don’t know why, nor whether inactivity in that lobe of the brain causes the math problem or is a symptom of the disability.
“It’s a severely underinvestigated disorder,” Ansari said.
But what happens as children fail in arithmetic, he said, is that some develop math anxiety and then want to shun the subject.
A survey released last month seems to bear that out. For-profit Sylvan Learning reports that about one-third of 400 children surveyed would sacrifice a month of video gaming or going on Facebook if they could never have to do algebra again, and 71 percent of 534 parents surveyed think helping kids with algebra is harder than teaching them to drive.
On a recent Wednesday at Bancroft Middle School in San Leandro, Calif., math teacher Mike Mandel was trying to explain negative numbers to a sixth-grader. “She didn’t understand the concept that -6 is less than zero,” he said. “I could tell she was trying her hardest, and it just wasn’t clicking for her.”
At Gunderson High in San Jose, math teacher Chuck Vacari is convinced that all students can learn – even algebra. “But they have to want to,” said Vacari, who teaches algebra and catch-up classes. He believes that students fall behind in their early teens not so much because of a disability but because of distractions like Facebook. And once they get off track, it’s hard to catch up.
Mazzocco said that “people have a perception that because math can be hard, either you’re good at it or not. But even if you have to exert effort, that doesn’t mean you should give up on it.”
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oneanddone on October 05 at 4:02 a.m.
And if you weigh 300 lbs you just have a glandular problem. The high school math teacher is right. Math isn’t like learning history. You have to want that “ah-ha” moment and sometimes that means busting your butt to get there. Way too many kids have been programmed by friends and family that “math is hard” and so they feel justified in giving up, particularly if they can spit out “dyscalculia” as the cause. They’ll be far better off knowing how to work algebra than whether Gauguin painted this piece or that.
polistra on October 05 at 4:13 a.m.
Ditto OneAndDone.
Obviously math talent has some innate component, just like music talent or verbal skills or an enjoyment of violence or a preference for blue Ford sedans. ALL human tendencies are partly innate.
But treating some of those tendencies as “diseases” requiring special expensive IEPs and all the other bureaucratic nonsense will ONLY MAKE THE PROBLEM WORSE.
Good teachers have always been able to sense who’s got talent in various ways, and give more attention and drill to the low-end kids. The solution is to keep the good teachers and give them more help and more leeway.
The_Seer on October 05 at 8:12 a.m.
^^^^^^^
Two “experts” who haven’t set foot in a classroom in decades weighing in on subjects with which they have absolutely no familiarity. Leave it to us professionals who understand human development and pedagogy. You don’t see teachers entering your work realm telling you how your jobs should be performed, do you?
Disabilities are disabilities.
The idea that advanced math like Algebra has relevance in most people’s adult life is nonsense. Being well rounded and studying art masters is just as important or more so than memorizing the quadratic formula.
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 05 at 9:18 a.m.
^ ^ ^ Math disability here. Not stupid — I learned to read at age 4 and was sent to the 1st grade reading class when I was in kindergarten — but could NOT do math. Skipped a grade because of my reading skills, then failed the next one because of math, so I ended up being in the “right” grade after all, LOL.
Addition & subtraction weren’t so bad once I got the hang of them, and multiplication was doable once I realized that one of the numbers is not really a number but a number of times, i.e. 7 x 5 means you start with seven and then make four more sevens, for a total of five sevens, and how many is that – but division was a beast; and long division… well, I had to learn long division (or whatever they call it nowadays) 3 years in a row because I forgot it over the summer and couldn’t make ANY sense of it in the fall. This was at 2 different schools with 3 different math teachers, so it was probably not their fault. I think how I finally got it was when I realized that division is just multiplication turned inside out, and I could get the right answer by doing it backwards. (So for instance “4380 divided by 365 = what?” really means “365 times what = 4380?” and you just work at it until you figure out how many times you can multiply 365 before it goes past 4380. Not so bad.)
The one kind of math I kind of liked, where I felt like I at least had a chance, was story problems. Never could figure out why other people didn’t like them.
Never did “get” algebra, although I managed to get C’s with the help of a tutor (if you can call it that – like a typical math whiz, which is what most math teachers are, his “help” consisted of doing a problem really fast, telling me it was easy, and then saying “now you do one.”) Geometry was not so bad because it dealt mostly with stuff you could see. Trigonometry was one long mystery from beginning to end, and once I passed that (I might even have gotten a B, although I can’t quite believe that, so prob’ly not), I didn’t have to take math any more. And I didn’t! Life has been much better ever since.
Meanwhile, the lowest I ever placed on the statewide Spanish test was 3rd (in 9th grade) and I was always at the top of the class even though I whipped off my homework in the 5 minutes before class started, and routinely finished writing just as the teacher came by to collect it; and my English teachers were encouraging me to major in English; but my passion was music, and I got into a major east-coast music school for college. (The freshman class on my instrument was 5 people.) Oh, and for some reason my SAT English score got me the only National Merit Scholarship awarded to anyone in my school (I think there were 4 or 5 winners in the Seattle area that year).
But math? No. Not even “no thank you” – just No.
catbox on October 05 at 10:20 a.m.
seer - you may be asking, “Do you want to Super-size that?” at your job but we use algebra all the time at mine. Try transposing any electrical formula like Ohms law or electrical power formulas without it. Kids are just plain lazy these days. they live with their parents until they are mid 20’s and use Google instead of thinking it out. I had a math phobia and so did my sister. We both did poorly at math and algebra in school. We never considered it a disability. She is now a nurse and I do electronics. Both require math and algebra. Hmmmm. Ya just have to keep after it.
jddavis on October 05 at 10:53 a.m.
1111—For your information, Seer is a middle school art teacher and former Nuclear Engineer. And by-the-way, since you aren’t a teacher, you are in no position to talk about math.
Seriously, math can be hard for some people…so what! It doesn’t mean that if math is hard for you that somehow you are disabled; it may be as simple as math doesn’t interest you. Like any other subject, if you have an interest in it you put forth more effort. Frankly, there isn’t anything wrong with that.
Dazzeetrader11 on October 05 at 12:29 p.m.
Nuclear engineer who teaches Jr High art? ….something about conflicted……..
Meanwhile I have an 11 year old and she never met a math problem she didn’t like. We’ve made math fun for the kids. All are advanced in it. I wonder sometimes if kids don’t do well in a subject like math because they fear it. I did……..but worked at it every year for 12 years and got to like it.
Of course extensive, physicas and chemistry make one use math . About 10 years ago, we launched ( when at the NIH) an extensice PET study to follow tracers in the brain when performing simple and complex operations. Truely..some brains just don’t seem to do well metabolically when perfroming functions. Some do. We made the observations but never could figure out why. Genes must come into play.
And yet, in China those kids have math pounded into them. Repetition seems to matter. Having fun with these disci;lines seemed ot help as well. Nebulous area. Lots to learch yet.
Dazzeetrader11 on October 05 at 12:30 p.m.
ps correction…”lots to LEARN yet” not learch (whatver that means…..
RedCedar on October 05 at 12:59 p.m.
So, flashing dots at toddlers predicts whether they’ll be able to do simple arithmetic, but what about more advanced math? When I was in college my brain stalled out at basic calculus, and I never did really develop an intuitive understanding of the electromagnetic field realm with Maxwell’s equations, Poynting vectors and such, while the really smart kids went zooming on to do math that had no connection to the real world at all (like calculus on manifolds) as far as I could see. I could do enough calculus to muddle competently through analog filter design but that was about it. My best friend got a math scholarship to Harvard and when he and his classmates talked about math, I hadn’t the slightest clue what they were talking about. They didn’t even bother trying to explain. It would have been like trying to teach a chimpanzee long division.
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 05 at 1:26 p.m.
1111 and jddavis — oh, I worked hard at it, much harder than either of my brilliant siblings. (THEY never had to bring a math workbook home over the summer and do a page of problems every day before being allowed to go bike riding.) My equally brilliant parents — a university professor and a doctor — couldn’t [and still can’t] understand how anyone could have difficulty with something as simple and logical as math.
Was I interested? I tried to be interested, but after enough defeats, and being told enough times by enough people that it was “easy,” I learned to fear it. Never had an experience that would have taught me otherwise.
(And Dazzee – “fun” with math? That’s a good one. Nevertheless, it does seem to hold true for a lot of people that math can be fun, so I guess I have to acknowledge that you might not be making it up.)
Meanwhile, in the ~30 years since, I’ve learned that I can learn pretty much anything if I can find a way to figure it out for myself. Unfortunately that doesn’t work for math classes.
The_Seer on October 05 at 2:16 p.m.
So much confusion here, so little time.
I have a B.A. in Math from Boston College. I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech. I was an Electrical Engineer aboard the U.S.S. Alaska (SSBN 732) Blue where I was a junior officer in the reactor compartment. I don’t teach middle school anything. In fact, I’ve never revealed what I teach or where or what level so those who’ve assumed are either ignorant or liars. I suspect it is a combinatin of the two. I also hold two other undergrad degrees (Electronic Media and Film/English) and another masters degree (Education).
Stick to what you know. In jddavis’ case that means making a shoe stink, in Dazee’s case that means draining a fifth of gin a night before she gets on the internet to spread her completely unbelievable “life” story and Randian brand of misunderstood nonsense.
Most of you sound like Michael Savage during his harangue about children with autism. No nothings with an alternate agenda where you can direct your anti-government vitriol at any subject.
Morons all.
RedCedar on October 05 at 2:30 p.m.
Know nothings.
The_Seer on October 05 at 2:39 p.m.
jddavis: Did you read the article before commenting? The whole article? There IS something wrong with people who have problems with estimation. It’s a disorder that occurs at the molecular level of brain function. Maybe you have another common disorder (dyslexia) that is similar and causes readhing comprehension problems. If so, I can help you. I work with kids from K-12 who encounter reading difficulties and I’ve taken kids who were reading at four to five grade levels below expections who were homeschooled by rotten parents and brought them up to speed in less than an academic year. There is still hope for you!
jddavis on October 05 at 3:02 p.m.
@Seer—you have an amazing educational background…incredible in fact! You are correct…I can make a shoe stink!
Your comment about the first two posters on this thread shows your egocentric belief that your knowledge is far superior than anyone elses. How would you know their experience(s) in classrooms or math in general? As someone with such high academic achievements you certainly run counter to the “open mind” philosophy in education.
I did make a misjudgement though, you aren’t an art teacher, you’re an English teacher. Art teachers aren’t so easily rattled!
Negat Bravo Zulu!
@Thatoneguy—Just because you had a harder time with math than your siblings or perhaps your parents doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. I would simply say you “are wired” differently than they are. I am certain you have abilities in some areas that far exceed what they have comparatively.
Everyone has their stong subjects. If yours isn’t math, so be it.
force_vector on October 05 at 3:49 p.m.
“The idea that advanced math like Algebra…”
Seer - Algebra is NOT advanced mathematics. Algebra is nothing more than the foundation of abstract mathematical thought. Unfortunately, advanced mathematics is best represented with calculus. I say unfortunately, because calculus and differential equations is where mathematics actually begins to model closely the real-world variables by their rate of change. Most people will never go this far, and thus never realize the many practical uses of math in daily life.
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 05 at 4:20 p.m.
^ ^ ^ awww… sad :-(
RedCedar on October 05 at 5:01 p.m.
I don’t buy it for a minute. Algebra, like alcohol, alembic, Aldebaran, and most other words starting with “al-” is part of a secret Al-Qaida Islamic plot to corrupt American youth, destroy our freedoms and our way of life, force us to worship Al-lah, In the nefarious world of algebra, students learn to replace good honest numbers like “three” and “five” — numbers that you can count on your fingers — with abstract meaningless letters, and then pretend to do math with those letters even though they don’t know what numbers somebody might someday replace those letters with. This opens the al-gebra students’ minds up to all sorts of mushy ideas like negative numbers, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, infinite series’, and before you know it they’re doing calculus around closed surfaces in n-space and you might as well give up all hope that they’ll ever do anything American like watch football (the American kind with big guys in armor, not the pinko kind with skinny guys in shorts), join the army, or buy a big-screen TV.
So, yes, be wary, very wary, of any of that “abstract mathematical thought.” and remember “an abstract brain is the Devil’s workshop.”
The_Seer on October 05 at 5:16 p.m.
Seer: My film degree is considered a “fine art” degree and I’m highly qualified to teach in that realm as well as my other subject area degrees. Currently I help students with reading intervention strategies. In the past I’ve taught video production, Language Arts, Graphic Arts, Math, Physics, Speech, Composition and Film/Literary criticism.
I was never rattled. I simply stated that most people who comment upon education issues don’t possess the background to offer what amounts to professional dialogue only speculation that has no basis in reality.
The_Seer on October 05 at 5:21 p.m.
jddavis: You once asked what I meant about correcting “wrongheadedness” that students arrive with at schools. Here is a concrete example from today.
A colleague needed to leave for an emergency with one of her children today so instead of contacting a substitute for a few periods other teachers worked their prep periods to fill her vacancy. She tasked students with viewing a video that explained string and membrane theories currently being postulated in the realm of Physical Science. After viewing they were to compose a single page response stating whether they agreed with the theories and explain their rationale. EVERY student who disagreed with the theories cited their religious beliefs as their reason. I returned their papers and told them they needed to use logic and reason because they were in a science class and not sunday school.
Did that help?
jddavis on October 05 at 6:03 p.m.
Seer—I understand now. As a teacher you use your position to discount your student’s religious beliefs. Interesting that you used this example of a “theory” (read: not proven) to reject their rationale.
I am a believer in science…not theories. Science is used to either prove or disprove said theories; what was covered in this science class that proved these theories to be “fact”?
Thanks for clarifying what you meant by correcting “wrongheadedness” in students.
Pigrobin on October 05 at 6:26 p.m.
The students screwed up. They should have said they disagreed simply because it can’t be proven (at least not yet). Similar to most religious “theories” that can’t be proven so put the onus back on the absentee teacher to support the merits of string theory. Sounds like a busy work assignment anyway, so no great loss.
misjustice on October 05 at 6:33 p.m.
@ Thatoneguy, I suspect that you excelled at story problems because they use language to set up the problem; and you have strength in language.
I could be wrong, I frequently am; just ask my Algebra professor!
; )
force_vector on October 05 at 7:02 p.m.
“I am a believer in science…not theories. Science is used to either prove or disprove said theories; what was covered in this science class that proved these theories to be “fact”?”
As a “believer” in science, surely you know that the scientific method is designed for one thing and one thing only: to disprove a hypothesis. The scientific method is never used to “prove” a theory, and if it is, the results can be discarded as garbage due to being tainted by the desire for a predetermined outcome. Furthermore, science is not based on, nor does it seek to establish “facts”. There are very few scientific principles agreed to hold the status of “law”, but never fact. To this day, even established scientific laws are challenged, as that is the way science slowly approaches the relativistic state of understanding. To be a believer in science is to be a believer in the eventuality of scientific understanding of natural phenomena based on repeatable results in a lab….subject to potentially change upon the invention of a better lab.
jddavis on October 05 at 8:33 p.m.
Force—Nicely put. I meant simply to say science proves or disproves theories, through scientific method.
Pigrobin—exactly!
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 05 at 9:36 p.m.
misj — Thanks, but I wouldn’t say I “excelled” at story problems; I just didn’t suck as hard at them. And yeh, my language skills were probably the reason why.
jddavis at 3:02pm — “wired differently” sounds like a nice way to put it. Nothing wrong with it, unless the point is to be getting decent grades in math. The fact is that math is considered a useful skill, and musical talent is not. Fortunately, the way I’m wired, I don’t care :-D
misjustice on October 05 at 9:49 p.m.
Thatoneguy, I consider musical talent a USEFUL SKILL! Music makes my life better!
; )
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do!
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 06 at 12:03 a.m.
Well then.
:-)
The_Seer on October 06 at 2:07 p.m.
jddavis: I never discounted their religious beliefs. I just stated what is obvious: That they don’t belong in a science class or use as a reason to reject a theory because it doesn’t conform with their superstition.