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What impairs subitizing in cerebral palsied children?
Author(s) -
Arp Sandrine,
Fagard Jacqueline
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.20069
Subject(s) - psychology , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , developmental psychology , management , economics
The goal of this study was to investigate the factors responsible for the low subitizing limit of cerebral palsied (CP) children. For this purpose, 44 CPs were tested on two tasks involving the rapid recognition of dot configurations. The answer was either a number (subitizing task) or the name of a pattern (pattern recognition task). The CPs were compared to controls of the same age. All children were evaluated for visual and visuospatial short‐term memory. The results showed that CPs with a low subitizing limit did not do better with a canonical arrangement than the random one, were impaired to the same extent on the pattern recognition task as on the subitizing task, and had a short visuospatial short‐term memory span. These results suggest that the low subitizing limit of CPs stems from a (non‐number‐dependent) lesser capacity to perceive a dot configuration as a gestalt. A low subitizing limit was almost always associated with a right‐hemisphere lesion. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 47: 89–102, 2005.