From difficulty to competency: cognitive abilities beyond mathematics and their impact on mathematical performance

Mathematics represents a discipline in which there is increasing interest in recent years. Indeed, achieving good mathematical competence seems to positively affect employment success, socioeconomic status, financial choices and even health status (Ritchie & Bates, 2013). Precisely because of the importance of this discipline, the present work aims to investigate mathematical skills in children and young adults. Both the studies will be introduced with a systematic review aimed at identifying the domain-general abilities more involved in mathematical difficulties (children) or performance (young adults). In light of some critical issues that emerged from the reviews, such as the lack of consensus in defining the groups with mathematical difficulties, it was considered appropriate to alter the course of the experimental studies of this work focusing on mathematical competence, and not on the mathematical disorder. However, to investigate mathematical competence, it is necessary to consider some characteristics of this construct. First, mathematics is a composite discipline, and therefore its measurement is heterogeneous. That implies that to define overall mathematical competence it is necessary to identify "sub-competencies" which may be influenced by different cognitive abilities. All that considerations, combined with the purpose of identifying the cognitive functions that most influence these skills, will be the cross-cutting aim of the present work.