Dyscalculia in adults

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Dyscalculia is a learning difficulty that affects an individual’s ability to do basic arithmetic such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Adults with dyscalculia often take longer when working with numbers and may be more prone to making mistakes in calculations.

They can also experience higher levels of anxiety and frustration. It may be harder for adults with dyscalculia to learn and recall math facts, such as times tables.

Estimation skills can also be affected. Dyscalculia is not a reflection of low intelligence, nor does it mean an adult will not be successful working through higher order mathematical reasoning. However, many people with dyscalculia believe they are simply bad at math.

Medical Students With Specific Learning Disabilities Continue to Face Educational Hurdles

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For medical students with specific learning disabilities (SpLDs), namely dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia, accommodations in how academic assessments are conducted may help, but a comprehensive approach that is both inclusive and flexible is needed to ensure equity and to safeguard their well-being. These findings, presented in BMC Medical Education, highlight how current approaches to medical education often fall short in accommodating students across the spectrum of needs.

I saw it as a thing to be ashamed of | Lived Experience of Dyscalculia

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Dyscalculia, or am I just not good at maths?

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A child from a close family is one of those children about whom we say, ‘Maths isn’t his strong point’. His father noticed, when he was about 5 years old, that he didn’t understand the concepts of ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ numbers. He somehow managed with addition, albeit by counting on his fingers, but subtraction was a real struggle, and any understanding of the ‘difference’ between two numbers was simply absent.

At school, when they got to the multiplication table, he learnt it by heart like a poem, but without really understanding it. His parents spoke to his teacher about how he seemed to be guessing the answers rather than grasping the logic and working out the solution himself.

After a great deal of struggle both at school and at home, his father began searching online to find out why this might be happening, and that’s how he came across the term ‘dyscalculia’. It is often referred to as ‘dyslexia for maths’, because both are neurological differences in the way the brain processes information.

A diagnosis of dyscalculia is made by psychologists and speech and language therapists based on prolonged observation of a combination of the following:

Signs Learning Difficulties Might Be Impacting Your Child’s Maths Performance

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Learning difficulties such as dyscalculia, along with conditions like ADHD, can affect how children process and retain information and maths is often one of the first subjects where the impact becomes visible.

If your child is working hard but making little progress in maths, or if maths has become a source of distress, it may indicate something more than a simple knowledge gap.

Dyscalculia, dyslexia, dyspraxia, maths anxiety, ADHD and knowledge gaps can look similar on the surface, but they have different causes and usually benefit from different kinds of support.