A Comparison of cognitive impairment, emotional processing and selective attention in students with and without dyscalculia

The current research was conducted in order to compare the cognitive impairment, emotional processing and selective attention in students with and without disability dyscalculia. The method of this study was causal-comparative. The statistical population of this study was composed of all secondary school students with and without dyscalculia in Ardabil in the 2013-14 school years. The subjects of the study included 20 male students with dyscalculia who were selected through multistage cluster sampling and using Keymath Test and 20 normal students were selected through stratified random sampling method. To collect data, scale of cognitive impairment, emotional processing and color-word Stroop test were used. Results of multivariate analysis of variance showed that there is a significant difference between the two groups of students with and without dyscalculia in terms of cognitive deficits, emotional processing and selective attention. Students suffering from dyscalculia attract environmental stimuli more slowly than their peers and act like younger children and always have problems in the field of cognitive failures and emotional processing. Therefore, teachers should strengthen strategies for cognitive impairment, emotional processing and increase their attention to compensate student's math learning deficits