Wang Xiaochen, Georgiou George K, Li Qing, Tavouktsoglou Athanasios
School of Business Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jun 6;9:906. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00906. eCollection 2018.
Several studies have shown that Executive Functioning (EF) is a unique predictor of mathematics performance. However, whether or not children with mathematics difficulties (MD) experience deficits in EF remains unclear. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine if Chinese children with MD experience deficits in EF. We assessed 23 children with MD (9 girls, mean age = 10.40 years), 30 children with reading difficulties and MD (RDMD; 12 girls, mean age = 10.82 years), and 31 typically-developing (TD) peers (16 girls, mean age = 10.41 years) on measures of inhibition (Color-Word Stroop, Inhibition), shifting of attention (Planned Connections, Rapid Alternating Stimuli), working memory (Digit Span Backwards, Listening Span), processing speed (Visual Matching, Planned Search), reading (Character Recognition, Sentence Verification), and mathematics (Addition and Subtraction Fluency, Math Standard Achievement Test). The results of MANOVA analyses showed first that the performance of the MD children in all EF tasks was worse than their TD peers. Second, with the exception of the shifting tasks in which the MD children performed better than the RDMD children, the performance of the two groups was similar in all measures of working memory and inhibition. Finally, covarying for the effects of processing speed eliminated almost all differences between the TD and MD groups (the only exception was Listening Span) as well as the differences between the MD and RDMD groups in shifting of attention. Taken together, our findings suggest that although Chinese children with MD (with or without comorbid reading difficulties) experience significant deficits in all EF skills, most of their deficits can be accounted by lower-level deficits in processing speed.
多项研究表明，执行功能（EF）是数学成绩的一个独特预测指标。然而，数学困难（MD）儿童是否在执行功能方面存在缺陷仍不明确。因此，本研究的目的是检验中国MD儿童在执行功能方面是否存在缺陷。我们评估了23名MD儿童（9名女孩，平均年龄 = 10.40岁）、30名阅读困难合并MD（RDMD）儿童（12名女孩，平均年龄 = 10.82岁）和31名发育正常（TD）的同龄人（16名女孩，平均年龄 = 10.41岁），评估内容包括抑制能力（颜色-文字斯特鲁普测验、抑制）、注意力转移（计划连接、快速交替刺激）、工作记忆（倒背数字广度、听觉广度）、处理速度（视觉匹配、计划搜索）、阅读（汉字识别、句子验证）和数学（加减法流畅性、数学标准成就测试）。多变量方差分析结果首先表明，MD儿童在所有执行功能任务中的表现均比其TD同龄人差。其次，除了MD儿童在注意力转移任务中的表现优于RDMD儿童外，两组在工作记忆和抑制能力的所有测量指标上表现相似。最后，对处理速度的影响进行协变量调整后，几乎消除了TD组和MD组之间的所有差异（唯一的例外是听觉广度）以及MD组和RDMD组在注意力转移方面的差异。综上所述，我们的研究结果表明，尽管中国MD儿童（无论是否合并阅读困难）在所有执行功能技能方面都存在显著缺陷，但他们的大多数缺陷可归因于处理速度方面较低水平的缺陷。
