Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Mathematics Disorder: A Case Study

Background and Mathematics disorder is one of the most important and prevalent childhood disorders and most of the psychologists have paid special attention to this disorder. Although many students experience different problems in learning mathematics, many of them do not exhibit mathematics disorder symptoms. In recent years, different approaches have been used for diagnosis and treatment of mathematics disorder. Cognitive-behavioral approach is one of these approaches. Current research aimed to investigate the effects of cognitive-behavioral therapy on mathematics disorder.Case: Research findings have constantly been indicative of the significant role of cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of mathematics disorder. This approach is based on cognitive skills training and uses methods such as self-instruction and self-talks to facilitate problem-solving skills. In this study we tried to encourage the subject to recognize stimuli affect her responses and change them properly. Present research was a case study with repeated measures. Data were collected using clinical interview and psychological testing. In this study, an 11-years old female student received a 10-session cognitive-behavioral therapy. The effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in decreasing the student’s mathematics mistake rates was assessed using repeated measures analysis. According to the findings, cognitive-behavioral therapy significantly decreased the student’s mistake rates. Implications of the results were discussed.