Review of the basic number competencies and visual perceptions of students performing good and poor maths

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between symbolic, non-symbolic number, and numerical axis skills of students who perform low in mathematics and visual memory. The study was conducted with 70 second grade students from five different elementary schools in Kirikhan district of Hatay city in the 2021-2022 school year. Of those students, the half of them had low performance, and the other half had high performance in mathematics. Quantitative descriptive survey model was utilized as a research method in this study. The data was collected through Math Achievement Test, TONİ-3, Raven Standard Progressive Matrixes (RSPM) Test, and Basic Number Handling Test. The results of the study revealed that the students who perform low in mathematics had lower performance on non-symbolic, symbolic number, and numerical axis skills compared to the students having high performance in mathematics. Low performing students needed more time to complete all the math tests than their high performing peers. The students having low performance in mathematics gained lower scores on the RSPM test compared to their high performing peers. The strong relationship was found between the test scores of the students and their visual memory scores.