Abstract:

The aim of the present study was to investigate the types of the mistakes that students with dyslexia might encounter in solving mathematical problems in relation to typically developing students. The participants were 30 students with diagnosis of dyslexia and 30 typical developing students, aged 10-13 years old. All participants were individually assessed through a subtest of the Psychometric Mathematical Competence Criterion for children and adolescents. In addition, after completing the criterion, an interview was conducted with all students in order to gather qualitative data on the way to solve mathematical problems and the type of mistakes the two groups present during mathematical problem solving. The results showed statistically significant differences between the performance of students with dyslexia and the typical developing group in mathematical word problem solving. In addition, investigating the difficulties of students with dyslexia during mathematical problem solving, we found that they present different kinds of mistakes from typical developing children and they face different difficulties. Our results confirm the research hypotheses and are consistent with previous findings, which indicate that students with dyslexia have weaknesses in mathematics and specifically in mathematical word problem solving.

Keywords:

Developmental dyslexia, mathematical problems solving, type of mistakes.