The Effects of Mathematics Education on Number Sense and Auditory Processing in Girls with Mathematics Disorders

Children with learning disabilities encounter numerous issues acquiring basic math skills or applying them to calculations that do not match their level of intelligence and chronological age. Weakness in the skill of number sense leads to problems, such as poor counting methods, slow recall of facts, and incorrect numerical calculations. Auditory processing disorder also refers to auditory information processing problems in the central nervous system with poor performance in one or more of the following skills: sound orientation, auditory differentiation, auditory pattern recognition, auditory temporal aspects, integration, differentiation, coverage, and chronological order, as well as auditory function in the presence of vocal stimuli of competition. Number sense and auditory processing are critical in academic success. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the effects of mathematics education on number sense and verbal processing in first–grade female students with mathematical problems.

 This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of the study consisted of all experimental knowledge with mathematical problems of the first–grade of primary schools in Kerman City, Iran, in 2020. Thirty subjects were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (n=15/group). The inclusion criteria of the research included being a first–grade student, having a math disorder, and consent to participate in the research; the exclusion criteria included receiving another therapeutic intervention and absence from >2 sessions. The required data were collected by the Number Sense Test (Jordan et al., 2007) and Auditory Discrimination Test (Wepman, 1958). The experimental group received 24 three–hour weekly sessions of the mathematics education intervention based on the mathematics education package (Vanbinst et al., 2014). The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean & standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

 The present research results highlighted significant differences between the experimental and control groups in number sense (p=0.002) and its components, including counting (p=0.005), number knowledge (p=0.001), and performance with numbers (p=0.003) as well as auditory processing (p=0.002) and its components, including difference (p=0.001) and equal (p=0.004). The effect size of number sense was measured as 0.472; the same value was computed for its components, including counting (0.247), knowledge of number (0.314), performance with numbers (0.584), also for auditory processing (0.412) and its components, including the difference (0.326) and equal (0.396).

 According to the current study findings, math education is effective in increasing the skills of number sense and auditory processing in first–grade elementary school female students with math problems.