Individuals with dyscalculia may exhibit lower levels of implicit bias toward disabilities than those with dyslexia, according to a recent study.
Published in Neurodiversity, investigators examined the relationship of over 460,000 participants with dyslexia and dyscalculia and implicit bias using data from the Implicit Association Test. The study included 14,700 participants with dyslexia, 1,721 with dyscalculia, 22,747 participants with physical disabilities, and 422,748 participants without disabilities.
Participants with dyslexia and dyscalculia exhibited significantly less implicit bias toward participants with disabilities compared with the physically disabled and no disability groups. The dyslexia cohort demonstrated reduced disability bias compared with both the physical disability group and no disability groups, and the participants with dyscalculia were found to have even lower levels of implicit bias compared with those with dyslexia.
The median D score, a measure of implicit bias, was 0.56 among the no-disability group, 0.45 among the dyslexia and physical disability groups, and 0.37 among the dyscalculia group.
These findings aligned with the automatization deficit theory of dyslexia, which attributes difficulties in forming automatic stimulus-response associations to participants with dyslexia. The study suggested that this automatization deficit may similarly extend to dyscalculia, affecting implicit bias formation.
The researchers reported no conflicts of interest.