Evaluación de la Contribución de las Capacidades Numéricas Básicas y de la Memoria de Trabajo al Rendimiento Aritmético en Niños de Edad Escolar.

Introduction: There are several causes and explanations of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the deficits of mathematical learning difficulties. Several studies have evaluated the relations among general domain cognitive abilities (like intellectual coefficient and working memory (WM)) or cognitive abilities of specific domain; However, there are a few studies that evaluate simultaneously the contribution of cognitive variables of both domains to the arithmetic efficiency. Aim: The present study aims to simultaneously evaluate the unique contribution of the basic numerical capacities (BNC-subitizing, counting and symbolic and non-symbolic comparison) and the different components of WM (verbal and visual-spatial) to the explanation of the variance in academic achievement in basic arithmetic, in third-year students of Basic General Education with and without difficulties in basic arithmetic Methodology: A sample of 93 children was evaluated through computerized tests of BNC and working memory tasks: A group of 25 children with arithmetic learning difficulties (ALD) and 68 children without difficulties in arithmetic (NAD). Results: We found that the symbolic comparison and visuo-spatial WM contribute significantly to efficiency in basic arithmetic. Discussion: The results support the hypothesis of a deficit in the access to the symbolic numerical representations as the origin of the difficulties in the performance in arithmetic and show that certain skills of general domain (WM) contribute significantly to the development of mental numerical representations. Conclusions: It is interesting to evaluate the predictive capacity of these variables, delving into pedagogical issues related to assessment and intervention in mathematics.