SPATIAL BIASES IN NUMBER PROCESSING IN CHILDREN WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA

The association between magnitude and spatial location of response is found out by using the SNARC effect which refers to the assignment of responses to the left side when the number represents a small magnitude and right side when the number represents a larger magnitude. Since developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a specific learning disability affecting the normal acquisition of arithmetic skills, it was hypothesized that these children may be lacking in the ability to represent and manipulate numerical magnitude nonverbally on an internal number line. Hence the present study was attempted to investigate spatial biases if any as a function of number magnitude in DD children. The stimulus bisection task was used to investigate this. Results revealed significant difference between typically developing children and children with DD for small and large numbers i.e., right side bias for typically developing children and left side bias for children with developmental dyslexia suggests that children in the typically developing group are on their way towards developing SNARC effect.