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Mathematical Learning Difficulties and Dyscalculia

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Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education

Introduction

Terms such as “Mathematical Learning Disability,” “Developmental Dyscalculia (DD),” but also “Mathematical Learning Disorder” and “Mathematical Learning Difficulty”Footnote 1 are originated in the field of cognitive psychology in order to investigate the development of basic number processing (e.g., Passolunghi and Siegel 2004; Rousselle and Noël 2007; Piazza et al. 2010). These terms are introduced referring to atypical situations, defined as a presence of various cognitive deficits in a student’s processing of numerical information that lead to persistent and pervasive difficulties with mathematics (e.g., Butterworth and Reigosa-Crespo 2007; Shalev 2007; Geary 2010). In early studies, these cognitive deficits were inferred by low performance, for example, in his entry in this Encyclopedia, Jeremy Kilpatrick – recalling that the term dyscalculia (Rechenschwache) was introduced in Budapest in 1916 by Paul Ranschburg – underlines how the new term was coined during...

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the literature, the acronym MLD has several meanings: the “D” may refer to any of at least three nouns (Disability, Disorder, Difficulty); here it refers to “Difficulty.”

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Baccaglini-Frank, A., Di Martino, P. (2020). Mathematical Learning Difficulties and Dyscalculia. In: Lerman, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15789-0_100018

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