An open trial assessment of "The Number Race", an adaptive computer game for remediation of dyscalculia (learning outcome 5)

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1744-9081-2-20.pdf

Open Access Research
An open trial assessment of "The Number Race", an adaptive
computer game for remediation of dyscalculia
Anna J Wilson*1, Susannah K Revkin1, David Cohen4, Laurent Cohen1,3 and
Stanislas Dehaene1,2

Abstract
Background: In a companion article [1], we described the development and evaluation of
software designed to remediate dyscalculia. This software is based on the hypothesis that
dyscalculia is due to a "core deficit" in number sense or in its access via symbolic information. Here
we review the evidence for this hypothesis, and present results from an initial open-trial test of the
software in a sample of nine 7–9 year old children with mathematical difficulties.
Methods: Children completed adaptive training on numerical comparison for half an hour a day,
four days a week over a period of five-weeks. They were tested before and after intervention on
their performance in core numerical tasks: counting, transcoding, base-10 comprehension,
enumeration, addition, subtraction, and symbolic and non-symbolic numerical comparison.
Results: Children showed specific increases in performance on core number sense tasks. Speed
of subitizing and numerical comparison increased by several hundred msec. Subtraction accuracy
increased by an average of 23%. Performance on addition and base-10 comprehension tasks did not
improve over the period of the study.
Conclusion: Initial open-trial testing showed promising results, and suggested that the software
was successful in increasing number sense over the short period of the study. However these
results need to be followed up with larger, controlled studies. The issues of transfer to higher-level
tasks, and of the best developmental time window for intervention also need to be addressed.