Have You Heard of Dyscalculia? 11 Things About The Math-Related Disorder

Dyscalculia is a very real learning difficulty that is often overlooked; it makes learning math more difficult than it would be for the average person (compare it to reading for dyslexic persons). Many people that have this learning difficulty often do not realize they have it and shrug it off as just being bad at math. Dyscalculia did not become an actually recognized learning difference until 1974 and there are actually two kinds of this learning difference: one people are born with and the other it is later on developed in life. However, for those born with it, it can be caused by certain factors such as a mother drinking while pregnant, etc. Although a lot of the people who have this learning difference of dyscalculia do not realize they have it because they think they’re just bad at math, just being bad at math does not mean that you have this condition. After experiments and multiple tests, a conclusion was made that perhaps this learning difference mainly affects the part of the brain called the “parietal lobe”. To make this conclusion valid a few tests were done on people where dyscalculia was induced for some people using an electromagnetic coil. This learning difference has been shown in pop culture, yet it is not a gender-specific learning difference. This learning difference can mean you are bad at math or it could mean that you have trouble being able to distinguish something as simple as whether a number is smaller/larger than another one. You can be at a greater risk of dyscalculia if you have epilepsy, ADHD, etc., and if you do have it, it is not curable; however, if it is diagnosed early on (which it can be difficult to diagnose) then arrangements can be made for that person to move forward in the right direction to make this learning difference less of a handicap for them.