Effects of language and cognitive development on mathematical performance in children with allergic rhinitis aged between 6-8.11

It is known that children with allergic rhinitis may not develop typically and may have difficulties in language, speech, academic and cognitive skills. In this study, children with allergic rhinitis between the ages of 6 and 8.11 were compared with their normally developing peers in terms of language, speech, cognition and mathematical skills. A total of 70 participants were included in the study, 35 individuals with allergic rhinitis and 35 healthy controls. After obtaining sociodemographic information from the 70 participants, the participants were presented with Turkish School Age Language Development Test (TODİL), Turkish Nonsense Word Repetition Test (TAST), Turkish Sentence Repetition Test (LITMUS-TR), Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R) and non-routine mathematical problems according to age level. According to the research findings, the participants in the allergic rhinitis group experienced problems such as reading and writing, academic difficulties, absenteeism, sleep problems and fatigue, while these problems were not observed in the healthy control group. In the TODİL test, the listening, organization, grammar and oral language skills of the allergic rhinitis group were below average, while these skills were at an average level in the healthy control group. In the WISC-R test, the mean scores of the allergic rhinitis group were significantly lower than those of the healthy control group. In the correlation analyses between mathematics performance and other tests, a significant relationship was found only between verbal scores and mathematics, but this relationship disappeared after the Bonferroni correction. A weak positive relationship was found between the LITMUS -TR test and mathematics performance, and a moderate positive relationship was found with the TAST. The study reveals that language and cognitive skills are important factors affecting mathematics performance; it shows that children with low language skills also have low mathematics performance. Keywords: Allergic Rhinitis, Language Impairment, Cognition, Mathematics