Re: Dyscalculia

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

More on this later.  I just received word they're shutting the #$@%! 
system down in 5 minutes



Jeanne and Margaret, on the surface, dyscalculia is trouble with math 
(etymologically dys = "bad, non-functional" + calculia "pertaining to 
calculation"), but what that means, whether it's the same for everyone 
diagnozed with it, and where one draws a line between being bad at math 
and being disabled with numbers, I don't know.  I started with an 
etymological definition, because again, I don't find it terribly accurate 
for me; calculation (at least simple grade school arithmetic) is about 
the onlything about numbers I *do* understand.

>From what I've read reversing symbols can be a sign of learning 
disability, but in and of itself it doesn't necessarily point to LD.  
I've heard and read other LD people saying that symbols are unstable; 
they shift around and won't stay still long enough to process or 
manipulate intellectually. I find that true of me too, though perception 
and production are somewhat different matters, both affected by stress, 
fatigue, and distraction.  I have to be *very* tired etc before 
perception is terribly impaired but production (transcription in other 
words) can go wierd much more quickly. For me it's true for symbols that 
represent words, and for those that represent ideas and numbers.  I am, 
however, very good with words, and somehow it doesn't matter quite as 
much that word symbols don't stay still, or maybe I can get them to 
stabilize more quickly.  I never had any trouble learning to read 
English, but I brought 6 years of experience as a native to that process, 
and I was lucky enough to have grown up in a home where books and 
language were central.  I did have some, at the time, perplexing 
difficulties learning to read Greek, which I started in high school, 
before the LD was diagnosed.  I remember confusing sigma and delta on the 
one hand and mu and eta on the other-- letters which no longer resemble 
each other.  In retrospect, learning to read Greek was learning the Greek 
language. Part of that was learning to predict permitted sequences of 
sounds.  You don't have to be able to consistently perceive e.g. sigma 
and delta if you can hear the words in your head and if you develop an 
unconscious feel for which one is more likely to be the one you're dealing 
with. This is what every language learner does; it's just easier to get 
more practice when it's your native language and people are speaking it 
all around you (by contrast, native speakers of homeric Greek are in 
short supply).  I had difficulties learning to read Hittite too, but at 
least by that point in my academic career I knew what I was up against.  
The cuneiform writing system used for Hittite is like Japanese in using 
both signs that stand for syllables and ideograms, signs that stand for 
ideas.  The former were easier for me than the latter, because I could 
use the knowledge of phonological context to figure out what I was 
supposed to be seeing.  Apparently some other people don't get this 
naturally.  When I was teaching my graduate students how to read 
cueniform they'd stumble and struggle trying to remember shapes, and they 
seemed kind of oblivious to the tips and hints I'd offer based on 
understanding phonological and grammatical context (e.g. "The word's at 
the end of the sentence; chances are it's a verb; we've alread figured 
out that the subject is third person singular; that sign on end is crying 
out to you, 'I'm ZI! I'm ZI'")

Learning disability is a broad term that covers a multiplicy of things.  
I'm good at establishing a relationship between symbols and *sounds* but 
for other LD people that's the incomprehensible aspect of literacy.  I 
mentioned cuneiform being like Japanese writing.  Not surprisingly my 
problems are like problems some Japanese "dyslexics" have with the 
ideographic component of their writing system.  Other Japanese dyslexics 
have few problems with ideograms, but struggle with the syllabic signs.  
I'm just lucky I didn't grow up in China--I'd be illiterate.

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