Dyscalculia

It's about as common as dysgraphia, dyspraxia, and dyslexia, all of which are frequently associated because they have overlapping areas of affect and similar symptoms.

I haven't been and don't think I am, but listening to your list of symptoms is interesting because I've had problems with many of those things. I mix up left and right all the time (oddly, I'm better at this in Japanese than English). Drives people crazy when I'm navigating because I'll say "turn left" and then realize as they start to turn that I meant "right." I'm awful with directions, but after a lot of practice have gotten better at reading maps. I used to be completely hopeless, though. I can't be around loud noises, in particular loud high-pitched sounds.

My boyfriend has to turn down the radio in his car before I can get in because it blasts my ears. I'm not sure I'd say I'm sensitive to odors other than vanilla, which makes me nauseous. Incense and what not I'm okay with.

My face/name recognition is awful. I'm a teacher, and it usually takes me at least a couple of weeks to start getting names, and even then if we leave the classroom I lose them again. Oddly, I remember where people sit, so I always look for a person where they were sitting. I can tell you that by the second day, but if people change seats I couldn't pick out who is who anymore. My students have figured this out and think it's funny to switch.

I'm okay with most math, though. Certain higher order math, anyway. I passed an AP calculus test back in the day. I couldn't do word problems to save my life, but putting random numbers into formulas? I rocked that. Basic stuff, though? Kicks my ass. I have never been able to do long division. I have to add and subtract big numbers backwards from the way I was taught because the original way just never made sense to me. Then there was that great moment in class the other day when I said 1993 was ten years ago. That was embarrassing.

But yeah, like I said I don't think I'd actually qualify for a diagnosis of this nature as I've never had a problem with any of these things interfering with my life. I always did pretty well in school, actually enjoyed math to a point (especially when I had a teacher who taught in different ways, which made it easier).

I just think it's interesting that a lot of what you mention is all connected. It makes me wonder if having an active imagination is connected to all of this in general.

Btw, I've typically been awesome with time. When I paid more attention to it, I used to never set an alarm clock because I could just decide what time I wanted to wake up and I would (can't do that anymore). I used to always be able to tell you what time it was within three minutes. It was kind of ridiculous. My boyfriend, on the other hand, has the craziest sense of time I've ever seen. He'll talk about something that happened "yesterday" that was two weeks ago. If he says something will take two minutes, he really means ten or fifteen, and if he says ten or fifteen, I can usually bet on it taking more like an hour. It took a lot of getting used to lol.

I may have it, but I'm not sure.

I can intuit basic math so I can actually predict project costs accurately, but I cannot do calculations at all. Never could. When I was a kid, I could tutor my classmates for math tests that they would then pass but I would fail.

I think I sometimes transpose numerals in sequences of numbers without realizing it, and without seeing it myself when I read my own written numbers, though other people sometimes tell me I wrote down a phone number wrong, for example. I got into a big fight about it with an ex-boss once. He had a client who kept calling him and leaving a number, and I'd write it down, read it back to him, he'd say I had it right. But when the boss tried to call him later, it was the wrong number. I thought the client was getting it wrong, because of the reading back thing, but now I'm not sure. Anyway it pissed me off because it was always the same number and my boss had it in his address list anyway, so I thought he was just being a dick to make me keep writing it down for him. Anyway, that was made me start to wonder if I might have some version of dyslexia.

But all that doesn't happen all the time, because I often proofread spreadsheets and write down phone numbers and get that done properly. I'm not sure what to make of it.

I have almost no sense of direction. My ability to get lost is kind of legendary. I can read maps, so I'm okay as passenger seat navigator (with caveat below), but I can't always relate the map to the physical world around me, so I have trouble guiding myself with a map. I have a boss now who gives visual directions -- when he wants me to go somewhere in the campus for him, and I ask where it is, he'll actually point out the window to show me, and I can't make him understand that "it's over there" and a series of turn directions mean nothing to me once I get out on the ground.

Geometry is right out. I can't wrap my brain around building things or charting things, especially in planning stages. I can spin yarns but not set up a loom to weave them. I can knit a fitted garment without a pattern but I can't figure out the 2D-to-3D planning to cut fabric and sew it into a garment. Architecture -- figured out as a small child that was probably not going to be my field.

I am forever transposing the words "left" and "right" and "up" and "down," but I don't know if that's this syndrome or just Spoonerisms. But it does add comedy to the passenger seat navigation thing. This is that caveat I mentioned above.

I also have no talent for music at all, and though I can hear music properly, I can't properly hear my own voice making music, so I have no ability to sing. I can't hear when I'm off key to be able to train myself to stay on key. My father had similar issues with math and music, so I must have gotten it from him, because almost everyone on my mother's side is musical.

Meanwhile, I have always had a talent and affinity for words, language, storytelling, imagination, reading, writing, and visual arts. Go figure.

The brain, she is a funny creature.

I did poorly in math all through my school life - from 1st grade to even an economics class in college. In high school, I had to be put into a special-ed type of math class even though I got As and Bs in my other classes.

These days, I get anxiety when I have to do anything math related. My check book can be a mess sometimes because of all the mistakes and corrections.

I don't understand why dyscalculia doesn't get enough attention as dyslexia. Both have the same amount of people (7% of the population), yet so few are aware of dyscalculia. I wish I was diagnosed when I was a kid, instead of being yelled and mocked by my teachers for not understanding math at all. I also wasn't lazy or careless; I just didn't get it.

I think teachers need to be more understanding of learning disorders in general. I'm a teacher, and a lot of times even when a student isn't diagnosed or we don't know what the problem is, we can tell something is wrong. We can't always do much about it, but we often can tell. It sounds like you had some really insensitive teachers, Pearl, and that's just awful.

kaitie said:

I think teachers need to be more understanding of learning disorders in general. I'm a teacher, and a lot of times even when a student isn't diagnosed or we don't know what the problem is, we can tell something is wrong. We can't always do much about it, but we often can tell. It sounds like you had some really insensitive teachers, Pearl, and that's just awful.

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I had two or three who would yell at me, but one who mocked me. He was a bully-type of teacher who gave everyone in the class a hard time, so it wasn't just me and my math.

But it is my experience with math and how frustrated my teachers got with me that makes me really want to spread the word about dyscalculia. Like I said, why is it not as well known as dyslexia if it supposedly as common?

I definitely have this. I *really* have this left/right problem - but interestingly, like Katie, this is much less the case when using my 2nd language. Hmm...

I have so much trouble with numbers. Even making a great deal of effort to stay focused, I still get lost when doing adding and subtracting. Factoring, multiplication & the like come easier. I started doing more or less daily exercises* to improve my adding & subtracting ability. I've been at it for about a year, two years? Yet I still have to focus really hard to be able to do basic mental math, and it takes a long time. Very frustrating. This problem has really hampered my ability to earn a decent living.

*a series of excersises while waiting to fall asleep. They are very helpful when you have trouble sleeping. That's how I got started. Believe it or not, it took me several months before I could count backwards much beyond 30 numbers without making mistakes.
1) count backwards from 300
2) count backwards from 300 by threes
3) memorize the 'teens' partners - eg 19; 19,0; 18,1; 17,2 etc. recite them backwards and forwards.
4) Add each teen to itself until you get to it's multiple of 10
example 17+17=34; 34+17=51 ...
Subtract from the resulting multiple of 10 back to the initial number
170-17=153; 153-17=136 ...

I have the left/right problem. I always assumed I got it from my dad. I'm crap with how many years ago something was. However, I can add up the items in the shopping basket in my head as I go along and be right at the checkout. One thing I found funny last year was watching a tv programme with a guy who was supposed to be really poor at identifying faces, and our scores were the same. So, on balance, no, I don't have this. Probably.

I was thinking about the seemingly unrelated symptoms, especially over-sensitivity to light, sounds, odors. I'm a migraine sufferer, and that is a classic migraine symptom. One of my triggers is flashing light patterns, and I can tell when a full-spectrum attack is starting by how much ambient light and normal noises and smells bother me -- to the point of being sickened by ordinary smells or finding normal sounds painfully loud. I wonder if dyscalculia and dyslexia may be related in some way to migraine.

I was actually officially diagnosed with this when I was in middle school. I have all the symptoms listed on the wiki page except for the inability to visualize and the sensitivities. Oddly, in those two things I'm the exact opposite. I'm excessively good at visualization and completely oblivious to all sounds and smells around me (including the ones I probably shouldn't be oblivious to, lol).

Since I dropped out of school (mostly to avoid ever doing math again) the main difficulties it has given me involve my total inability to read a map or remember the ways to get places. If I for *any* reason have to deviate from my usual route to a place, I will get hopelessly lost, even in my very small home town. Because I just have the turns memorized instead of having a map in my head the way most people seem to. What's doubly frustrating is that I can visualize my destination in excruciating detail. I just can't conceptualize how to get there from where I'm at. Like others, I'm unable to conceptualize left and right as well. But, like how some were saying they can tell directions better in their second language, I can tell directions using port and starboard instead of left and right. I always write and give directions the nautical way, and if someone forgets to give me directions in that manner, there's exactly a 50% chance I'll turn the wrong way. Being able to visualize gives me the extra added frustration of being able to visualize the map in my head, and yet still completely unable to relate it to what I'm seeing around me.

Time means pretty much nothing to me, though I've always blamed this on having a very good long-term memory. Things that happened 15 years ago feel like they happened last week because I remember them in such detail. Or so I've always assumed.

I don't invert numbers like some of you, though. I can transcribe numbers perfectly and do the four basic functions correctly in my head (which is why the problem didn't show up until middle school--I was fine until I passed long division and started geometry and more 'abstract' maths). I'm incapable of conceptualizing any higher math concepts, just like I can't make the leap between map and road. Some sort of inability to relate abstract things.

ETA: If writers have higher rates of dyscalculia than the general population, it's probably just because anyone who finds math as absolutely impossible as I did will seek a field where higher math is not required. Writing related careers would be towards the top of that list.

Chasing the Horizon, your experience with directions is identical to mine in every detail you describe. Makes me feel a lot better.

I hadn't really thought about the time thing, but what you describe is similar to my experience, too. I have no sense of the passage of time. It takes effort for me to remember how long ago something happened or how long I've been at something, such as how long I've been an office worker.

At the same time, I can judge how long something will take. I can't calculate it, but I can listen to a plan and say, "That's a four-day project," or "I can get that done in three hours," and I'm almost always right. I can even predict time needed in case of various contingencies. But it's always a shock to be told how long ago my grandparents died. "Has it been that long?"

Same with money. It's a constant topic of debate among friends why I can't calculate the tip on my restaurant bill. I ask them to do it for me when we go out. Recently, they demanded I try to figure the tip on a combined bill. I looked at the total and just said a number. Then one of them worked it out on her phone, and my number was exactly right. I hadn't really guessed. I went with what felt proportional. But there was no way I could have calculated it using an equation.

It's like when I helped my schoolmates study for math tests. I can understand the concepts, even explain them. But when I look at the equations in print, my brain just fails.

muravyets said:

I was thinking about the seemingly unrelated symptoms, especially over-sensitivity to light, sounds, odors. I'm a migraine sufferer, and that is a classic migraine symptom. One of my triggers is flashing light patterns, and I can tell when a full-spectrum attack is starting by how much ambient light and normal noises and smells bother me -- to the point of being sickened by ordinary smells or finding normal sounds painfully loud. I wonder if dyscalculia and dyslexia may be related in some way to migraine.

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I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv, but I know more than the average bear about neurological disorders. A lot of neuro disorders have overlaps, and are comorbid with other conditions. So I'm not surprised to see you wonder about this.

I'm also fairly certain I would be diagnosed with dyscalculia if I was tested for it.

I'm dyslexic with crappy math skills. I got diagnosed when I was in the sixth grade. It affected my spelling and grammar. And while I'm a slow reader, I read a lot.

I still occasionally get my letters confused if I'm handwriting, and homophones are my archnemesis.

As for math, I have trouble doing calculations in my head. I'll get the numbers all backwards. It has to be written out in front of me, and I need a calculator, or I'll take forever counting it out.

Pearl said:

But it is my experience with math and how frustrated my teachers got with me that makes me really want to spread the word about dyscalculia. Like I said, why is it not as well known as dyslexia if it supposedly as common?

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Largely because most people have both, not one or the other.

Also; both dyslexia and dyscalculia are collections of symptoms, and you'll notice some overlap.

With very young children (say 10 and under) one of the first indications that the child might be dyscalulaic is that the child has prolonged, extreme, noticeable difficulty with arithmetic because of problems with placing the numbers in the right columns/rows when doing sums involving large numbers to be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.

Other common indications with young children is difficulty learning to tell time using an analog clock that lasts past 10 or so, and difficulty with the sequence of mathematical operations or other serialized procedures—for instance, in learning to do basic compass, straight edge, protractor sorts of geometry that are common in fifth and sixth grades.

This is the word I was trying to think of earlier this week--thank you!

It's been suggested to me more than once that I have dyscalculia (jeez--even my spell-checker doesn't know this word), but I've never been officially diagnosed. I had widely disparate scores in my SATs between the math and verbal, I've always had a wretched relationship with numbers, and I'm a synesthete--which isn't a disorder, per se, but lumped into that same family of neurological weirdness.

Holy crap, that list of symptoms is my life, except the directions/maps bit (I'm actually very good with directions and maps, and rarely get truly lost, though sometimes I have difficulty finding a new place the first time).

But ye gods, math. Higher math, I can do fine with the concept (Calculus, algebra, etc) but as soon as you start inserting numbers, I get hopelessly lost. Most especially, I have difficulty doing basic calculations with single-digits. It's honestly faster for me to use a calculator than to try and add 8+3 (if I count on my fingers, I'm relatively certain that's 11, right?). And yet, I've always put this down to early bad math teaching and developing an aversion. I've never even heard of dyscalculia!

Let's see: Math, check. Left & Right, check (I have to think hard & use the mnemonic "write with my right"). Time conceptualization...that would explain why time always seems to pass weirdly for me (not just minutes and hours, but days and years feel weird to me). Sounds, check; lights, check (I always assumed having light-colored eyes made me more sensitive); odors, check (sometimes). Name/face matching, check (I'm terrible with names, and sometimes with faces too).

I feel like a hypochondriac, but...I kinda want to go get tested for this, like...tomorrow. It would just explain so much of my life.

Medievalist said:

Largely because most people have both, not one or the other.

Also; both dyslexia and dyscalculia are collections of symptoms, and you'll notice some overlap.

With very young children (say 10 and under) one of the first indications that the child might be dyscalulaic is that the child has prolonged, extreme, noticeable difficulty with arithmetic because of problems with placing the numbers in the right columns/rows when doing sums involving large numbers to be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.

Other common indications with young children is difficulty learning to tell time using an analog clock that lasts past 10 or so, and difficulty with the sequence of mathematical operations or other serialized procedures—for instance, in learning to do basic compass, straight edge, protractor sorts of geometry that are common in fifth and sixth grades.

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My problem was/is more about focusing. I simply couldn't concentrate and I was slow to catch on with basic addition and subtraction. But even today, I do mix up numbers. Last month, I noticed a mistake in my check book where I added 21 + 12 as 44, and not 33. It was the 2s that screwed up my thinking somehow.

But anxiety and lack of confidence plays a big role in doing basic mathematics.

As for reading, when I was younger I had no problem. But now I seem to be confusing one word for another a lot lately. Maybe dyslexia laid dormant in me and now it is rising? *shrug* *sigh*

Rhoda Nightingale said:

This is the word I was trying to think of earlier this week--thank you!

It's been suggested to me more than once that I have dyscalculia (jeez--even my spell-checker doesn't know this word), but I've never been officially diagnosed. I had widely disparate scores in my SATs between the math and verbal, I've always had a wretched relationship with numbers, and I'm a synesthete--which isn't a disorder, per se, but lumped into that same family of neurological weirdness.

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You know what's ironic? I always did better on math than verbal. I'm awful at definitions and those things where you have to match words. "____is to ____ as ____is to____." that sort of thing? I just can't do it. I can understand how to use a word, but I can't do straight up definitions. I have a hard time defining things for my students because I just don't think that way. I was always above average for the math scores, and usually below for verbal. (not counting my truly atrocious GRE scores. I was horribly ill and had 3 hours sleep and scored something like the 18th percentile for math. I knew I was in trouble when I started getting questions saying "Which number is in the tens column?")

The really strange thing? Every assessment I've had that included writing I've scored in the 98% for writing ability. So I can't do the verbal, but I'm a great writer? Kind of weird, huh?

Anyway, to be more on topic, I suck at mental math. I've never been able to do it. I have to write it down. When I was in algebra I was most likely to be counted off for adding two and three and getting six than I was for getting the steps wrong. Luckily by high school they let us use calculators.

I've been really tempted to try to learn the Japanese counting system with the abacus. My students in Japan could do complex math in their head so quickly because they'd learned to do it from an abacus. I think if I could learn the skill, it would improve this area for me and I wouldn't have to worry about it any more.

Bookewyrme said:

Most especially, I have difficulty doing basic calculations with single-digits. It's honestly faster for me to use a calculator than to try and add 8+3 (if I count on my fingers, I'm relatively certain that's 11, right?).

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Omg, this is so me. For some reason, certain number additions are really hard for me. I can give you 7+7 and 7+8 easily, but I can't give you 7+6 and 7+5 without thinking twice.

What made me giggle is that 8+3 is one of the ones that I always have to think twice on. I know 8+2 without even thinking, and 8+4 comes to me like nothing, but 8+3? I have to figure 8+2 and add one to make sure I've got it right every single time lol.

kaitie said:

Anyway, to be more on topic, I suck at mental math. I've never been able to do it. I have to write it down. When I was in algebra I was most likely to be counted off for adding two and three and getting six than I was for getting the steps wrong. Luckily by high school they let us use calculators.

I've been really tempted to try to learn the Japanese counting system with the abacus. My students in Japan could do complex math in their head so quickly because they'd learned to do it from an abacus. I think if I could learn the skill, it would improve this area for me and I wouldn't have to worry about it any more.

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I cannot do mental math to save my life, man. Even the word "abacus" makes me slightly nauseous. My dad tried to teach me binary numbers and also "casting out nines," because I made the very poor decision to ask for his help on my homework once. Gah... It was fun for him, the way doing word searches is fun for me, but all I remember is wanting to cry and thinking, "Jesus Christ, I just want to finish this shit so I can watch Buffy, WHY MUST YOU TORTURE ME???"

On another ironic note? I'm really good at sudoku. I do not understand why.

I'm dyslexic and have a sensory processing disorder, so some of those happen to me. Left and right are tricky, I struggle to memorise number sequences and time/clocks are an issue (but actual mathematics and spatial awareness aren't issues), which is pretty common with dyslexia. There is overlap between dyscalculia and dyslexia.

Sensory-wise, I get overloaded easily. I have to cover my skin up, as I can't stand the feel of the air on my skin. I won't eat certain food textures, as they feel like they're stuck in my throat. Too much of anything gives me spots in front of my eyes and fever symptoms. There's more to it than that, but that's a general overview.

^Is the food texture thing part of it too? Damn! That's why I hate shrimp and coconut!