It’s a name that’s probably more than a little familiar to you if you’ve spent any time at all in the global dyslexia community over the past few years: dyscalculia. It can co-occur in people who have dyslexia already, however we don’t tend to talk about it quite as much as we talk about other co-occurring conditions such as ADHD/ADD and Autism. It’s one of a set of other ‘dys’-conditions that we’ll be taking a closer look at in the coming weeks, exploring the fundamentals of living with dyslexia better by understanding some of the other factors that can have an impact on the lives of people with literacy differences.
When we break down the language, the implications of dyscalculia are relatively clear: whereas ‘dyslexia’ is formed from the Greek prefix δυσ- (dus-), "hard, bad, difficult" and +λέξις (lexis), "speech, word", ‘dyscalculia’ replaces the second half of the word with+καλkυλι (calculi) meaning “counting”.
It’s recognised by most experts to be a specific learning disability that involves somebody having an innate difficulty in learning and comprehending mathematics. It’s akin to dyslexia in that it’s in-built into your brain makeup, and the two conditions can occur together fairly frequently- but also it’s very possible to have one but not the other too.
What is Dyscalculia?
The British Dyslexia Association identifies dyscalculia as: “… a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics. It will be unexpected in relation to age, level of education and experience and occurs across all ages and abilities.”
The BDA also suggest that “…Mathematics difficulties are best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and they have many causal factors. Dyscalculia falls at one end of the spectrum and will be distinguishable from other maths issues due to the severity of difficulties with number sense, including subitising, symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude comparison, and ordering. It can occur singly but often co-occurs with other specific learning difficulties, mathematics anxiety and medical conditions.”
What does Dyscalculia look like?
So let’s break this down: dyscalculia is a difficulty in comprehending numbers and number relationships like addition, division, multiplication and the like. It’s not just ‘struggling with algebra’ or mixing up SIN, COS and TAN occasionally – it’s a fundamental difference in the ways that a brain processes numbers, and it’s irrelevant to your skill level and intelligence in just the same way that dyslexia is. It can have an effect on other things too that aren’t just adding up and taking away – it can also manifest as:
This can lead to high levels of mathematics anxiety, especially in young people who often have to study the subject up until the age of 16 and 18 under UK and US regulation respectively, regardless of where their future career intentions lie.
Whilst the act of mathematics might not be quite as fundamental to our everyday lives as the act of reading, it’s still a very dominant presence with our everyday existence. From knowing when to fill of your car with gas from the indicator on your dashboard to working out how many rolls of wallpaper you’ll need to complete your latest DIY project, it’s actually a very prevalent thing that we’ll need to complete quite the number of mental mathematics actions in any given day.
How do we diagnose it?
Dyscalculia is difficult to identify via any single diagnostic test – most diagnoses use a range of clinical interviewing, assessment measures and testing to reach a verdict of dyscalculia, and take into account how the mathematics difficulty manifests in each individual. Online tests exist that are handy for people who might suspect that they have dyscalculia, but all assessments should go through trained professionals, as this is how we can best understand how to support individual cases of dyscalculia too. Chat to your schools, healthcare professionals, therapists and SENCOs about it – diagnostic procedure is different all over the world, and through this you’ll find the best possible way to get the help you or the people in your care the support that they need to succeed.
If you’ve got dyscalculia and it’s been formally diagnosed, it also means in most countries that you’re entitled to more support in your learning, as well as perhaps some considerations in exams as well. In the world of work, too, there are often governmental policies that mean you can access extra help and support that can alleviate some of your mathematics differences in the workplace, such as different software or materials. It’s well worth exploring if you suspect that your struggles with mathematics in school might go deeper, or if you suspect that your dyslexia might have a sister condition that’s affecting your everyday life.
The Dyscalculia Information Centre has many in-depth resources when it comes to garnering a better understanding of dyscalculia, and is a great starting point for anybody who suspects that they might have it.