O'Hearn Kirsten, Landau Barbara
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Brain Cogn. 2007 Aug;64(3):238-46. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.03.005. Epub 2007 May 4.
Williams syndrome (WS) is a developmental disorder associated with relatively spared verbal skills and severe visuospatial deficits. It has also been reported that individuals with WS are impaired at mathematics. We examined mathematical skills in persons with WS using the second edition of the Test of Early Mathematical Ability (TEMA-2), which measures a wide range of skills. We administered the TEMA-2 to 14 individuals with WS and 14 children matched individually for mental-age on the matrices subtest of the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test. There were no differences between groups on the overall scores on the TEMA-2. However, an item-by-item analysis revealed group differences. Participants with WS performed more poorly than controls when reporting which of two numbers was closest to a target number, a task thought to utilize a mental number line subserved by the parietal lobe, consistent with previous evidence showing parietal abnormalities in people with WS. In contrast, people with WS performed better than the control group at reading numbers, suggesting that verbal math skills may be comparatively strong in WS. These findings add to evidence that components of mathematical knowledge may be differentially damaged in developmental disorders.
威廉姆斯综合征（WS）是一种发育障碍，其特点是语言技能相对保留，但存在严重的视觉空间缺陷。也有报道称，患有WS的个体在数学方面存在障碍。我们使用《早期数学能力测试》（TEMA - 2）第二版对患有WS的个体的数学技能进行了测试，该测试涵盖了广泛的技能。我们对14名患有WS的个体以及14名在考夫曼简易智力测试的矩阵子测试中按心理年龄进行个体匹配的儿童进行了TEMA - 2测试。两组在TEMA - 2的总体得分上没有差异。然而，逐项分析揭示了组间差异。在报告两个数字中哪个最接近目标数字时，患有WS的参与者表现比对照组差，这一任务被认为利用了由顶叶支持的心理数字线，这与之前显示患有WS的人存在顶叶异常的证据一致。相比之下，患有WS的人在读取数字方面比对照组表现更好，这表明在WS中语言数学技能可能相对较强。这些发现进一步证明，在发育障碍中，数学知识的各个组成部分可能会受到不同程度的损害。
