AUTOMATIZATION COGNITIVE STYLE AND THE SELECTION OF AN INSTRUCTIONAL METHOD FOR TEACHING BASIC MATH FACTS TO LEARNING DISABLED AND COMPENSATORY EDUCATION STUDENTS

This study investigated whether there was a relationship between the automatization cognitive style and the ability to benefit from two methods of teaching basic math facts, namely the strategy and drill approaches.; Subjects for the study were 91 students enrolled in resource rooms for handicapped children or learning centers for compensatory education. The students were in the 2nd through 6th grades and ranged in age from 7 years 4 months to 13 years. There were 36 learning disabled or neurologically impaired students and 55 compensatory education students who had been identified as deficient in math.; Each subject was administered three subtests of the WISC-R, (block designs, object assembly and mazes) and the Rapid Automatic Naming Test (RAN) to identify them as either strong or weak automatizers. The raw scores from each test were converted into T-scores. Students with higher T-scores on the RAN were defined as strong automatizers and those with higher T-scores on the three WISC-R subtests were defined as weak automatizers (perceptual-restructurers).; Instruction was provided to one half of the students using a drill approach which emphasized mastery of basic math facts (addition or multiplication) through directed drill. The remainder of the students were taught math facts using an approach which related harder facts to easier ones already known. Each cognitive style group was divided evenly between the two teaching methods. Instruction was provided for twenty minutes a day, three days a week for a period of eight weeks.; Pre and post testing was done using three arithmetic tasks, each consisting of 98 different basic addition, subtraction or multiplication problems. The number answered correctly in a three minute period before and after the eight weeks of instruction was compared by an analysis of variance to determine if an aptitude treatment between cognitive style and teaching method was present.; The results did not establish the presence of an interaction between cognitive style and teaching method, nor did it find one method to be superior to the other overall. However, an analysis of the mean gain scores for each cognitive style group divided into younger and older students suggested that the success of each instructional method might be different depending on the cognitive style and age of the student. Among those students who were strong automatizers, the older students (ages in excess of 124 months) had higher mean gain scores when taught by the mastery approach and the younger (ages of 124 months or less) had higher mean gain scores when taught by the strategy approach. The reverse pattern was found among those classified as perceptual restructurers.