Investigating the Factors Influencing Mathematics Ability in Children with Adhd: a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

Mathematical achievement is one of the foundations for a thriving society. The emerging field of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) aims to bring together biology, cognitive science, development, and education to create a strong research foundation for education. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a frequently diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 5%–10% of school-aged children. The disorder tends to negatively affect academic performance. A high comorbidity with learning disabilities (25% - 65%) is reported in children with AHHD. And the prevalence of mathematics disability in ADHD populations is 11%-26%. The present study adopts a cognitive neuroscience perspective to investigating the factors influencing mathematics ability in children with ADHD. It is evident that there are two categories of cognitive factors affecting mathematics ability; domain-specific and domain-general factors. A domain-general cognitive factor can be deployed in unfamiliar contexts and can be applied to various domains. Domain-specific cognitive factors pertain to a single domain which is mathematics ability in this case. First year, this study aims to explore domain-general cognitive factors that might predispose children with ADHD to difficulty in mathematics acquisition by using neuropsychological assessments. Second year, we plan to investigate the degree basic numerical skills, domain-specific cognitive factors, are affected by ADHD. The neural underpinnings of arithmetic cognition in children with ADHD will be explored by the event-related potential technique when they processing enumeration, magnitude comparison, and arithmetic verification tasks.

Project ID:PF10607-1675
External Project ID:MOST106-2511-S182-001