Comparison
Dyscalculia vs dyslexia
Both are neurodevelopmental and independent of intelligence; one affects number, the other written language. They co-occur in roughly a third of cases.
| Dyscalculia | Dyslexia | |
|---|---|---|
| Affected domain | Number, magnitude, arithmetic, time | Reading, spelling, phonological processing |
| Early sign | Poor subitising, mixed-up counting, cannot read clocks | Weak rhyme and sound awareness, letter–sound mapping difficulty |
| Brain networks | Intraparietal sulcus (magnitude representation) | Left temporo-parietal and occipito-temporal networks |
| Prevalence | 3–7% | 5–10% |
| Co-occurrence | 30–40% with dyslexia; often with ADHD | 30–40% with dyscalculia; often with ADHD |
| Intervention | Concrete materials, number sense, CRA, Triple-Code | Systematic phonics, fluency work |
| Word problems | Cannot pick the operation (representation) | Cannot read the problem (decoding) |
When both are present, assessment and intervention must address each domain separately, and it must be established whether the maths difficulty stems from the reading difficulty.