• Zahira Z Cohen, Yarden Gliksman, and Avishai Henik.
• Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, POB 653, Beer-Sheva, Israel. Electronic address: Zahirac@post.bgu.ac.il.
• Neuroscience. 2019 Dec 15; 423: 109-121.

AbstractDevelopmental dyscalculia (DD) is characterized by lower numerical and finger-related skills. Studies of enumeration among those DD that suggested core deficiency in pattern recognition, working memory or/and attention were mostly carried out in the visual modality. In our study, we examined visual (dots) enumeration of 1-10 stimuli and tactile (vibration) enumeration of 1-10 fingers among DD and matched-control adults. We used 800-ms stimuli exposure time of either random/non-neighboring or canonical/neighboring stimuli arrangements (visual/tactile). Compared to controls, those with DD responded faster in visual random enumeration and did not differ in reaction time (RT) of canonical stimuli arrangements. However, while the control group had near perfect accuracy in random stimuli arrangements of up to five stimuli, DD participants performed accurately for only up to four stimuli, and they were less accurate in the canonical stimuli arrangements in the counting range. In the tactile task, DD participants showed less accurate tactile enumeration only for neighboring arrangements, more profoundly for finger counting (FC) patterns. The longer exposure time in the visual task enabled us to explore pattern recognition effects when working memory and attention loads were low. We discuss possible modal-independent deficits in pattern recognition and working memory on enumeration performance among those with DD and the unique role of fingers in ordinal and cardinal representation of numbers.Copyright © 2019 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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