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janrinok writes:
"A paper published jointly by University of Warwick and Ruhr-University Bochum states that 'Researchers have found that preterm children are at an increased risk of having general cognitive and mathematic problems.'"
From the paper:
Dyscalculia, a learning disorder which involves frequent problems with everyday arithmetic tasks, is diagnosed when children do worse in maths than would be expected based on their general intelligence. Study co-author Professor Dieter Wolke from the University of Warwick explained, 'Mathematic impairment is not the same as dyscalculia. A child with both low IQ and low mathematic abilities can have general mathematic impairment without suffering from dyscalculia'.
The study's results, which looked at 922 children between the ages of seven and nine, showed that there is no direct correlation between preterm births and dyscalculia. However, the authors showed that being small-for-gestational-age is an indicator of whether a child is likely to have dyscalculia.
Children who are born very preterm, before 32 weeks, of gestational age have a 39.4% chance of having general mathematic impairment compared to 14.9% of those born at term (39 to 41 weeks), which translates into a significantly increased odds ratio of 3.22 (after controlling for child sex, socioeconomic background and small-for-gestational-age birth). In contrast, very preterm children's risk of being diagnosed with dyscalculia was with an odds ratio of 1.62 (22.6%) compared with term controls (13.7%) not significantly increased. 'What this study has shown is that preterm children are not at an increased risk of having dyscalculia, but their risk may be increased if they were born small for gestational age', says Professor Wolke.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 24 2014, @03:16AM
Because being a good case for the application of euthanasia is never funny.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SixGunMojo on Monday March 24 2014, @11:47AM
Because being a good case for the application of euthanasia is never funny.
Anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday March 24 2014, @01:18PM
A good case for euthanasia? Really? So you think that people who aren't good at math should die then?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 28 2014, @03:05PM
I'm assuming "term" is "termination". It seems to me that all children (and adults) are at risk of having "maths" problems (here in the states we just cal it "math") at some point before death, and if the Terminator taught me anything, it's that termination = death.
So why are we calling them preterm again? Or are we not talking about termination of the child? If so, calling them "preterm children" when "term" doesn't actually refer to termination of the child seems ... wrong.
In conclusion, the english language is weird.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by timbim on Monday March 24 2014, @07:31AM
I'm not good at holding numbers in my head and people seem to compute things much faster than me. However I did well in algebra and calculus because it was more visual to me. When you can turn numbers into geometries then the problems seem to come alive so to speak. Then I did much worse in differential equations and linear algebra because I couldn't visualize what was happening, it's like arithmetic in that way. We've known people learn differently and have different strengths in mathematics. I have forget what my point was...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @02:31PM
I was born a month premature. I finished pre-calc in highschool and my GPA has always been 3.2 or so so I consider myself about average.
In college I had to retake Calc and Calc 2 but I got an A upon retaking them. Those were the only classes I ever had to retake and I pretty much worked while taking them which largely contributes to the lack of time I had/have to study.
(Score: 2, Informative) by jimbrooking on Monday March 24 2014, @12:07PM
There seems to be no HREF in the anchor link around the article's title.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @02:26PM
To come to it's 'revelations' study evaluated very narrow age group: 7-9yr olds. Perhaps what the study found is that it takes more time to make up for lost 'womb time'. Parts of brain develop rapidly after birth based on outside stimuli and may overshadow development of of other parts of the brain (interconnections). I think that after a while those inequalities will diminish and if same kids were to be tested 6 years from now correlation of cognitive skill to their birth weight would greatly diminish.
(Score: 1) by bill_mcgonigle on Tuesday March 25 2014, @02:55PM
headline: Preterm Children at Risk of Having Maths Problems
TFS: 'What this study has shown is that preterm children are not at an increased risk of having dyscalculia'
perhaps: "Math Risk for Low-birthweight Preterm children" ?