Comparison of the Relationship between Words Retained and Intelligence for Three Instructional Strategies among Students with Below'Average IQ

The current study replicated MacQuarrie, Tucker, Burns, and Hartman (2002) with a sample of 20 students who had been identified with a disability and had an IQ score that was between 1 and 3 standard deviations below the normative mean. Each student was taught 27 words from the Esperanto International Language with the following conditions: (a) traditional drill in which unknown words were rehearsed until correctly stated three times, (b) three unknown words interspersed among six known words and repeated three times (interspersal), and (c) incremental rehearsal involving the rehearsal of unknown words among nine known words so that each new word was rehearsed nine times. Consistent with the previous study the condition with the most opportunities to respond led to the best retention. The correlation between IQ and the number of words retained 1 to 2 weeks later for the most effective condition (incremental rehearsal) was.03 and.15 after correcting for range restriction. Moderate correlation coefficients between IQ and number of words retained were found for the other two conditions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.