EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS AND MATHEMATICAL ACHIEVEMENTS BY STUDENTS WITH MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

The aim of the study is the establishment of the respective contributions of inhibitions, updating and shifting as components of executive functions when explaining the existing variance in the solutions to numerical, textual and problem based mathematical tasks, put forth by students with mild intellectual disabilities (MID). The study sample comprises 103 students with MID, between 10 and 16 years of age (AS = 13,05; SD = 1,96), of both sexes (48,5% boys and 51,5% girls). The estimation of inhibitions, updating and shifting was performed using the "Stroop" test, the "Stop Signal" test, "Letter memorization" test and the "Keep Track, Plus / Minus and Number / Letter" tests. With the aim of evaluating the extent to which the mathematical concepts have been adopted, the Woodcock Johnson III Test of Achievement NU (WJ-III ACH) was applied. The results show that the estimated aspects of executive functions have a meaningful predictive capacity when it comes to the understanding of numerical, mathematical tasks (R-2 = 0,603), textual arithmetic tasks (R-2= 0,642) and problem based mathe-matical tasks (R-2 = 0,715). The capacity for the inhibition of the disctractor (p = 0,00) showed itself as the strongest predictor in the category of numerical tasks while in the categories of textual arithmetic and problem based tasks, the strongest predictor was the updating working memory (p = 0,00).