Lunardon Maristella, Decarli Gisella, Sella Francesco, Lanfranchi Silvia, Gerola Silvia, Cossu Giuseppe, Zorzi Marco
Neuroscience Area, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste, Italy.
Department of General Psychology and Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Italy.
Res Dev Disabil. 2023 May;136:104478. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104478. Epub 2023 Mar 16.
The role of domain-general cognitive abilities in the etiology of Developmental Dyscalculia (DD) is a hotly debated issue.
In the present study, we tested whether WISC-IV cognitive profiles can be useful to single out DD.
Using a stringent 2-SD cutoff in a standardized numeracy battery, we identified children with DD (N = 43) within a clinical sample referred for assessment of learning disability and compared them in terms of WISC cognitive indexes to the remaining children without DD (N = 100) employing cross-validated logistic regression.
Both groups showed higher Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning than Working Memory and Processing Speed, and DD scores were generally lower. Predictive accuracy of WISC indexes in identifying DD individuals was low (AUC = 0.67) and it dropped to chance level in discriminating DD from selected controls (N = 43) with average math performance but matched on global IQ. The inclusion of a visuospatial memory score as an additional predictor did not improve classification accuracy.
These results demonstrate that cognitive profiles do not reliably discriminate DD from non-DD children, thereby weakening the appeal of domain-general accounts.
一般领域认知能力在发育性计算障碍（DD）病因中的作用是一个备受争议的问题。
在本研究中，我们测试了韦氏儿童智力量表第四版（WISC-IV）的认知剖面图是否有助于甄别发育性计算障碍。
在一个标准化的算术测试组中使用严格的2标准差临界值，我们在一个因学习障碍接受评估的临床样本中识别出发育性计算障碍儿童（N = 43），并采用交叉验证逻辑回归，将他们在韦氏智力量表认知指标方面与其余无发育性计算障碍儿童（N = 100）进行比较。
两组在言语理解和知觉推理方面的得分均高于工作记忆和加工速度，且发育性计算障碍儿童的得分普遍较低。韦氏智力量表指标在识别发育性计算障碍个体方面的预测准确性较低（曲线下面积 = 0.67），在将发育性计算障碍儿童与平均数学成绩但整体智商匹配的选定对照组（N = 43）进行区分时，其准确性降至随机水平。纳入视觉空间记忆得分作为额外预测指标并未提高分类准确性。
这些结果表明，认知剖面图无法可靠地区分发育性计算障碍儿童和非发育性计算障碍儿童，从而削弱了一般领域理论的吸引力。
