Comparing the effects of incremental rehearsal and traditional drill on retention of mathematics facts and predicting the effects with memory

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Incremental Rehearsal (IR) and traditional drill (TD) on retention of multiplication facts with 29 students in third and fourth grades with low mathematical skills. Results indicated that IR led to significantly more facts being retained, and was essentially equal to TD for efficiency as measured by number of facts retained per instructional minute. Memory scores accounted for 34% of the variance beyond mathematics calculation scores in retention of multiplication facts for the TD condition, but only 2% of the variance for the IR condition. Thus, retention of multiplication facts seems largely influenced by a student's memory skills when using less effective instructional techniques such as TD, while approaches like IR are likely effective regardless of memory skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).