Innate or Acquired? – Disentangling Number Sense and Early Number Competencies

Julia Siemann, Franz Petermann

The clinical profile termed developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a fundamental disability affecting children already prior to arithmetic schooling, but the formal diagnosis is often only made during school years. The manifold associated deficits depend on age, education, developmental stage, and task requirements. Despite a large body of studies, the underlying mechanisms remain dubious. Conflicting findings have stimulated opposing theories, each presenting enough empirical support to remain a possible alternative. A so far unresolved question concerns the debate whether a putative innate number sense is required for successful arithmetic achievement as opposed to a pure reliance on domain-general cognitive factors. Here, we outline that the controversy arises due to ambiguous conceptualizations of the number sense. It is common practice to use early number competence as a proxy for innate magnitude processing, even though it requires knowledge of the number system. Therefore, such findings reflect the degree to which quantity is successfully transferred into symbols rather than informing about quantity representation per se. To solve this issue, we propose a three-factor account and incorporate it into the partly overlapping suggestions in the literature regarding the etiology of different DD profiles. The proposed view on DD is especially beneficial because it is applicable to more complex theories identifying a conglomerate of deficits as underlying cause of DD.