However, none of these studies used non-numerical tasks controlling for non-numerical

aspects of comparisons. Nevertheless, evidence demonstrates that both symbolic and non-symbolic comparison performance primarily reflects domain general comparison processes rather than properties of the number representation (Holloway and Ansari, 2008). Hence, the omission of a control task is a significant shortcoming and, in principle, studies without control tasks cannot draw any number-specific conclusions. In addition, the dot comparison task is inherently confounded by non-numerical parameters which cannot be controlled in each particular trial (Gebuis and Reynvoet, 2012 and Gebuis and Reynvoet, 2012; Szucs et al., 2013). Further, when tracking both numerical and non-numerical parameters in dot comparison tasks, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) only showed sensitivity to non-numerical parameters but not to numerical parameters (Gebuis and ABT-888 Reynvoet, 2012). Hence, in the dot comparison task participants’ supposedly numerical judgments can rely on non-numerical parameters in each particular trial. This problem also affects fMRI studies using non-symbolic magnitude comparison. It is noteworthy

that Landerl et al. (2004) is one of the most often cited studies in support of the MR theory. However, that study merely SB431542 ic50 demonstrated that DD have slower magnitude comparison speed than controls which can happen for many reasons. The distance effects did not differ in DD and controls and DD only showed a marginally steeper counting range RT curve than controls (pp. 117 and 119–120). In fact, the distance effect was not significant even in controls which suggests lack of power. In an extensive follow-up study Landerl and Kolle (2009) could not detect any robust basic number processing second difference between DD and controls and they concluded that they ‘did not find strong evidence that DD children

process numbers qualitatively differently from children with typical arithmetic development’ (ibid., abstract). While the MR theory of DD currently dominates neuroscience research, behavioral research identified several cognitive functions which play an important role in mathematical development and proposed several alternative theories of DD which have mostly been neglected by neuro-imaging research. First, a large volume of studies found deficient verbal and/or visuo-spatial WM function in DD (e.g., Hitch and McAuley, 1991, Passolunghi and Siegel, 2001, Passolunghi and Siegel, 2004, Keeler and Swanson, 2001 and Bull et al., 2008; Swanson, 2006; Geary, 2004) and longitudinal studies confirmed that WM function is related to mathematical performance (Geary, 2011, Swanson, 2011 and Passolunghi and Lanfranchi, 2012). WM serves as a limited capacity mental workspace for operands, operators, and retrieved numerical facts which have to be mobilized even during the simplest calculations (Geary, 1993 and Ashcraft, 1995).