Longitudinal behavioral and ERP evidence for domain-general working memory deficits in children with mathematical difficulties

This study investigated numerical and non-numerical working memory (WM) deficits in children with Mathematical difficulties (MD) using a novel WM task that integrates both domains. This prospective longitudinal cohort study initially recruited 500 preschool children. All participants underwent comprehensive cognitive, behavioral, and electrophysiological screening. After multi-stage assessments a final sample of 54 children was selected. This sample comprised 27 children diagnosed with mathematical difficulties (27 MD children; mean age = 76 ± 4 months; 9 girls) and (27 control; mean age = 77 ± 5 months; 10 girls). Behaviorally, children with MD exhibited lower hit rates, higher false alarm (FA) rates, and significantly reduced signal detection sensitivity (d′) scores, indicating widespread WM impairments. Event-related potential (ERP) analyses revealed that the Late Posterior Negativity (LPN) component—a neural marker of WM processing—was significantly diminished in children with MD across both numerical and non-numerical WM tasks. Furthermore, logistic regression analyses demonstrated that combining behavioral (d′) and electrophysiological (LPN amplitude) indices significantly predicted group membership with considerable accuracy, underscoring their potential utility in early identification of MD. These findings support the domain-general impairment hypothesis in MD and suggests that WM deficits extend beyond numerical processing to affect broader cognitive functions.