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Basic money-counting skills of children with mental retardation
1Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, OH 45221-0376, USA.
Insights
Children with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities struggle with basic money counting and comparison tasks compared to typically developing peers. Their errors increase with task complexity, highlighting a need for targeted financial education programs.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Developmental psychology
- Special education
Background:
- Children with intellectual disabilities often face challenges in numerical cognition.
- Understanding financial concepts is crucial for daily living and independence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the money counting and comparison thought processes in children with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities.
- To compare their performance with typically developing children.
Main Methods:
- Three tasks of progressively reduced cognitive demand were administered.
- Participants included children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n=17), other intellectual disabilities (n=17), and typically developing first graders (n=15).
Main Results:
- Children with intellectual disabilities exhibited significantly greater difficulties with money tasks than typically developing children.
- The frequency of comparison errors among children with intellectual disabilities increased as counting task complexity rose.
Conclusions:
- Children with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities demonstrate specific deficits in numerical cognition related to money.
- Findings support the development of tailored programs to teach financial principles to this population.
Abstract:
The thought processes involved in counting and comparing small amounts of money among children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 17), other children and adolescents with mental retardation of unknown etiologies (n = 17), and normally developing first graders (n = 15) were examined. Three different tasks that progressively reduced the cognitive demands placed on the children were used. Although not generally different from each other, the two groups of children with mental retardation had far greater difficulties with the tasks than normals. Also, as the complexity of the counting task increased, the number of comparison errors made by the children with mental retardation increased. Based on the findings, a program for teaching money principles to children with mental retardation was proposed.