The Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation in Improving Working Memory, Visual Processing, and Spatial Perception in Children with Math Learning Disorders

Cognitive rehabilitation consists of a set of targeted programs to remediate or improve cognitive functions. Cognitive skills are considered the main predictors of mathematical ability and related deficits are associated with mathematical disorders. The present study sought to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation in improving working memory performance, visual processing, and spatial perception in children with mathematical learning disorders.

This research utilized a semi-experimental approach with a pre-test-post-test design. The population of the study consisted of students with math problems in Tehran province. 30 participants were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned into two experimental (n=15) and control groups (n=15). KeyMath diagnostic test (Connelly, 1988) was used to evaluate their mathematical learning disorder. A researcher-made device called Morva was used for the intervention program. The experimental group participated in eight intervention sessions of 50 to 60 minutes for four weeks. However, the control group did not receive any intervention. The children’s’ performance before and after the intervention was evaluated by the Children’s fourth Wechsler test (Wechsler, 2003). Analysis of covariance for the data was conducted in SPSS 22 software.

The findings revealed a significant difference between the two groups (P<0.001). Therefore, our results suggest that the cognitive intervention had a significant effect on working memory performance, visual perception, and spatial perception.

These results reveal that cognitive interventions might have been effective on the mathematical competency of children with math learning disorders.