The development of number concepts in children with differing degrees of spina bifida and hydrocephalus

The main contributions of the work in this thesis are summarised in testing the following hypotheses: (i) children with differing degrees of spina bifida and hydrocephalus pass through normal stages in the development of number concepts as postulated by Piaget; (ii) spina bifida children without a shunt are significantly more successful overall in Piagetian number tests than those with; (iii) there is a significant negative correlation between operativity in the Piagetian number tests and degree of overall handicap as reflected by the Pultibec Scale; (iv) spina bifida boys are significantly more successful educationally, particularly with respect to the development of number concepts, than spina bifida girls; (v) spina bifida children have specific perceptual problems; (vi) the well-attested progress in pre-school spina bifida children's acquisition of vocabulary skills is not maintained thereafter to the same extent; (vii) the level of reading attainment of spina bifida children overall is below normal at each age level.