• PDF / 364,175 Bytes
• 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
• 62 Downloads / 236 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT

---

The Contribution of General Cognitive Abilities and Specific Numerical Abilities to Mathematics Achievement in Students Who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Lilan Chen 1 & Yan Wang 2 Accepted: 24 September 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract General cognitive and specific numerical abilities that underlay mathematical performance have been heavily investigated among hearing students; however, the inquiry has rarely been applied to students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (d/Dhh). We examined whether general cognitive abilities (i.e. nonverbal IQ, processing speed, and spatial ability) and specific numerical abilities (i.e. symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude processing) are related to mathematics achievement in 198 d/Dhh students in Grades 3 to 9. The results of our regression models indicated that, the three general cognitive abilities independently explained the variance in mathematics achievement when entered in one step; and spatial ability and processing speed had an independent contribution to mathematics achievement in the presence of the specific numerical abilities. The specific numerical abilities independently explained the variance in mathematics achievement when entered in one step; however, none of them had an independent contribution to mathematics achievement in the presence of the general cognitive abilities. These findings suggested that mathematics achievement in d/Dhh students depended more on general cognitive abilities, such as spatial ability and processing speed, than on specific numerical abilities. Keywords Deaf or hard-of-hearing students . Mathematics achievement . General cognitive abilities . Specific numerical abilities

* Lilan Chen [email protected] * Yan Wang [email protected]

1

School of Psychology, Hainan Normal University, Haikou 571158, China

2

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities

Mathematics is needed everywhere in our daily lives, so that we know — how long it takes to drive or walk to our destination, how long it takes to prepare for bathing or dressing, and so on. All of these examples are related to mathematics ability. Mathematical knowledge and ability play an important role in the successes of our social life, poor mathematics ability will lead to low socio-economic status in adulthood (Ritchie and Bates 2013) and impact long-term psychological well-being (Gross 2009, for a review). Many researches in hearing children and children with mathematical learning disabilities have showed that the general cognitive abilities and specific numerical abilities contributed to mathematical performance (Passolunghi and Lanfranchi 2012; Passolunghi et al. 2014; Träff 2013). However, research concerning the issue among individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (d/Dhh) is scarce (Bull et al. 2018; Chen et al. 2019). In this study, we try to examine the contribution of general cognitive abilities (nonverbal IQ, processing speed, and spatia