Automatic number priming effects in adults with and without mathematical learning disabilities

Emmy Defever; Silke M Göbel; Pol Ghesquière; Bert Reynvoet

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00004

Automatic number priming effects in adults with and without mathematical learning disabilities

Front Psychol. 2014 Feb 5:5:4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00004. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Emmy Defever¹, Silke M Göbel², Pol Ghesquière³, Bert Reynvoet¹

Affiliations

¹ Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium ; Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven Kulak Kortrijk, Belgium.
² Department of Psychology, University of York York, UK.
³ Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium.

Abstract

This study examined automatic number processing in adults with mathematical learning disabilities (MLDs). The performance of adults with MLD during an automatic symbolic and non-symbolic priming task was compared to gender-, age-, and IQ-matched controls. No difference in the priming distance effect was found between the adults with and without MLD, suggesting that adults with MLD have an intact magnitude representation. Moreover, the adults with MLD did not have problems in processing the numerical symbols 1-9, suggesting that this basic deficit which is experienced by children with MLD is resolved by adulthood.

Keywords: access deficit; magnitude representation; mathematical learning disabilities; priming task; representation deficit.