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RESEARCH BRIEF
Comparison of the Relationship Between Words
Retained and Intelligence for Three Instructional
Strategies Among Students with Below-Average IQ
Matthew K. Burns and Christina H. Boice
University of Minnesota
Abstract. 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 Interna-
tional 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 corre-
lation coefficients between IQ and number of words retained were found for the
other two conditions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Gates (1930) estimated that a child with an
average IQ required 35 repetitions to immedi-
ately recognize a word; more repetitions were
required if the IQ was lower and fewer if it was
higher. This recommendation suggested a rela-
tionship between intelligence and learning that
was moderated by the number of repetitions of
the material being taught. Subsequent research
also found that the number of opportunities to
respond (OTR; Greenwood, Delquadri, & Hall,
1984) affected the relationship between intelli-
gence and immediate recognition of previously
learned words because the correlation between
receptive vocabulary and number of words re-
tained was small in the condition that included
the highest OTR and moderate among the con-
dition with the least OTR (MacQuarrie, Tucker,
Burns, & Hartman, 2002).
Although word recognition is not a pri-
mary outcome per se, it can be an important
Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Matthew K. Burns, 341 Education Science
Building, 56 E. River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455; E-mail: burns258@umn.edu
Copyright 2009 by the National Association of School Psychologists, ISSN 0279-6015
School Psychology Review,
2009, Volume 38, No. 2, pp. 284–292
284
skill, especially among students identified
with a disability. Rapid word recognition can
lead to fluent reading, which in turn is closely
related to reading comprehension (Jenkins,
Fuchs, van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003).
Moreover, interventions that increase the
speed with which words are read in print have
been found to lead to increased comprehen-
sion (Therrien, 2004). Rapid recognition of
words is potentially important for students
with disabilities because it can provide a
“comprehensive foundation for functional ac-
ademics” (Browder & Xin, 1998, p. 103) and
improve functioning with various daily tasks
(Schloss, Alper, & Young, 1995).
Previous research on how to best teach
word recognition to students with disabilities
found that providing students with high OTR led
to increased retention and generalization to con-
nected text (Burns, 2007a,b; Burns, Dean, &
Foley, 2004). Although high repetition of new
items during acquisition is important, some chil-
dren acquire various reading skills during a
given lesson but later do not retain the informa-
tion. Being able to accurately and fluently com-
plete the acquired task at a later time, without
reteaching, is critical because it directly precedes
generalization and is necessary for global gains
in the skill (Ardoin, 2006).
There are several effective approaches
to teaching word recognition among children
with learning challenges. For example, a con-
stant time-delay procedure (Schoen & Ogden,
1995) and community- or recreation-based
methods using naturally occurring examples
(e.g., street signs, grocery stores, and so on;
Mosley, Flynt, & Morton, 1997) both led to
rapid recognition of words. Students learned
more words at a faster rate using a direct
instructional approach than with a community-
based method, but preferred the latter ap-
proach (Schloss et al., 1995).
Recent research found that incremental
rehearsal (IR; Tucker, 1989), a drill method
for facilitating sight-word recognition, led to
enhanced recall of learned words and consid-
erably faster acquisition of word sets than
baseline or comparable conditions among chil-
dren with disabilities (Burns, 2007a,b; Burns
et al., 2004). IR is a flash card drill method
that intermixes unknown items with items al-
ready known at a ratio of one unknown to nine
known. First-grade students learned more
words over the same time period with IR than
with a traditional drill (TD) approach that used
100% new material or with 50% known ma-
terial interspersed throughout the learning set
(Nist & Joseph, 2008). Previous research also
found that IR led to better retention of words
than TD and interspersal conditions among
third- and seventh-grade students, presumably
because of the higher OTR for the IR condi-
tion (MacQuarrie et al., 2002). The effect size
for words retained among seventh-grade stu-
dents was greater than 2.0 when comparing IR
to interspersal, and between 0.76 and 1.17
when comparing IR to TD. Effect sizes greater
than 0.80 are generally considered to be a
large effect (Cohen, 1988), so effect sizes be-
tween 0.76 and 2.0 suggest that IR was an
effective intervention.
The median correlation coefficient be-
tween receptive vocabulary and number of
words retained for the TD and interspersal con-
ditions in previous research was .27 and .20
respectively, but was ⫺.07 for IR (MacQuarrie
et al., 2002). The differences in correlation co-
efficients were described as “astounding” and
“worthy of the serious attention of all researchers
in the field” (Daly & McCurdy, 2002, p. 457.)
However, the previous study was conducted
with students with presumably at least average
intelligence. Moreover, the previous study mea-
sured receptive vocabulary rather than intelli-
gence, and although the two are highly corre-
lated, receptive vocabulary is acquired and is
conceptually distinct from intelligence (Dunn &
Dunn, 2007).
IQ has been considered an instruction-
ally relevant within-child variable for at
least 70 years (Fiorello, Hale, & Snyder, 2006;
Gates, 1930; Jensen, 1989), but IR appears to
negate the effects of individual differences
such as receptive vocabulary among students
with assumed average intelligence. The cur-
rent study is a replication of the MacQuarrie et
al. (2002) study and is designed to investigate
the differential effects of the instructional con-
ditions on the number of words retained and
the relationship between IQ and words re-
Comparison of Relationship Between Words Retained and Intelligence
285
tained for each condition. A noteworthy dif-
ference between this study and the MacQuar-
rie et al. study is that the sample in this study
included only children with below-average IQ.
The following hypotheses guided the study:
(a) instructional conditions will lead to signif-
icant differences with regard to the number of
words retained after 1 and 2 weeks, (b) the IR
condition will lead to the most words being
retained, and (c) the correlation between IQ
and words retained will be smallest for IR.
Method
Participants
The participants for the study were 20
students in seventh or eighth grade attending
one of two middle schools in Minnesota. Each
student was diagnosed with a disability (10
were diagnosed with a learning disability
and 10 with mental retardation) according to
Minnesota state special education eligibility
criteria, and each had been administered the
fourth edition of the Wechsler Intelligence
Scale for Children (Wechsler, 2003) within
the past calendar year. The resulting age-based
IQ score from that school-administered assess-
ment was between 1 and 3 standard deviations
below the national mean (85– 61), with a sam-
ple mean of 74.40 (SD ⫽9.79).
One of the schools that the students at-
tended served 813 students in seventh and
eighth grades, 40.2% of whom were eligible
for the federal free or reduced-price lunch
program. The second school served 880 stu-
dents in sixth through eighth grades, with 27.1%
eligible for the program.
Students were selected to participate in
the study because they received special edu-
cation instruction in the two participating mid-
dle schools. We reviewed the educational
records of students who received special edu-
cation support because of a diagnosis of men-
tal retardation or learning disability, and con-
sent forms were sent home to students whose
IQ score fell between 61 and 85. Of the 20
students, 12 (60%) were in seventh grade, 8
(40%) were in eighth grade, 8 (40%) were
female, and 12 (60%) were male. Moreover, 5
of the students (25%) were African American
and 15 (75%) were Caucasian.
Materials
Students were taught three sets of nine
words with three different conditions. As with
the MacQuarrie et al. (2002) study, the words
were taken from the Esperanto International
Language to reduce the likelihood that they
were learned from a source external to the
study. The 27 words all consisted of five-letter
concrete nouns and were printed with a hori-
zontal orientation on a 4 ⫻6 in. index card.
Known words for the study were taken
from a word list associated with second grade
(Fry & Kress, 2006) and were also written on
4⫻6 in. cards. Each student was presented
the individual known words before the first
session and asked to verbally read the word
presented on the card. Those that were cor-
rectly read within 2 s were considered known
and used for the study.
Procedure
The students accompanied a researcher
to a quiet area away from the classroom and
sat with the researcher at a small table. Each
received one instructional condition during
each session and one session occurred per day.
The Esperanto words were randomly assigned
to one of the three conditions before the in-
struction occurred.
The study occurred across five sessions
over the course of 5 weeks. During the first
session, the student was taught the first nine
words in one condition (Condition A). The
second session occurred 1 week later and be-
gan by testing the retention of the words
taught in Condition A; then the second instruc-
tional condition (Condition B) was used to
teach nine different words. The third week of
the study again involved testing the retention
of words taught with Condition A, testing the
retention for Condition B, and then teaching
nine more words with Condition C. During the
fourth week, the retention for Conditions B
and C were tested. Finally, the fifth week
involved testing the retention of Condition C.
Thus, retention of the unknown words was
School Psychology Review, 2009, Volume 38, No. 2
286
tested 1 and 2 weeks after each instructional
condition. Words were considered retained if
the correct verbal pronunciation and correct
English translations were provided within 3 s.
The introduction of a new unknown (Es-
peranto) word was the same across conditions.
First, the word and the English translation
were verbally stated by the researcher while
the student looked at the card. Next, the stu-
dent was asked to verbally restate the word
and translation. The student was then asked to
use the word in a sentence. Subsequent pre-
sentations of the word required the student to
restate the word and the English translation.
The students were required to verbally state
the word when presented with one of the
known words. Errors were immediately cor-
rected during instructional conditions, but no
error correction occurred while assessing
retention.
The conditions were presented in a
counterbalanced order (e.g., Student 1—TD,
Interspersal, IR; Student 2—Interspersal, IR,
and TD; Student 3—IR, TD and Interspersal;
Student 4 —TD, Interspersal, IR; and so on).
Each session varied in length of time depend-
ing on the condition implemented. TD re-
quired approximately 20 min to complete, In-
terspersal required approximately 15 min, and
the IR condition required approximately 25
min.
Treatment Conditions
TD. This condition involved 100% un-
known words. The nine words to be taught
were presented one at a time to the student in
the aforementioned manner the first time each
was presented. Then the words were presented
individually in the same order. When the stu-
dent correctly stated the word and its transla-
tion three times, the word was considered
known and was removed from the deck. The
condition continued until all nine words were
learned.
Interspersal. The second condition in-
volved presenting the unknown Esperanto
words to the students in three sets of three,
which was also the procedure used in the
MacQuarrie et al. (2002) study. The first three
words were interspersed with six known
words in the following manner: first known,
second known, third known, first unknown,
fourth known, fifth known, second unknown,
sixth known, and third unknown. After ini-
tially presenting each unknown word with the
procedure just described, each set of words
was practiced three times, by presenting all
nine cards one at a time and asking the student
to state the word and its English translation for
the unknown words. After completing the nine
cards three times, the three unknown words
then became known words and three previ-
ously known words were removed. Next, three
new unknown words were added in the same
sequence. Thus, the final set of three unknown
words was interspersed among six previously
learned Esperanto words and all nine words
were Esperanto words. The condition ended
after the three sets were completed.
IR. The IR condition involved presenting
one new unknown word at a time with nine
known words, for a total of 10 cards. After the
first presentation of the unknown word, the stu-
dent was asked to verbally state the Esperanto
word and its English translation each time the
word was presented. It was rehearsed in the
following manner: first unknown, first known;
first unknown, first known, second known; first
unknown, first known, second known, third
known; first unknown, first known, second
known, third known, fourth known; first un-
known, first known, second known, third known,
fourth known, fifth known; first unknown, first
known, second known, third known, fourth
known, fifth known, sixth known; first unknown,
first known, second known, third known, fourth
known, fifth known, sixth known, seventh
known; first unknown, first known, second
known, third known, fourth known, fifth known,
sixth known, seventh known, eighth known; first
unknown, first known, second known, third
known, fourth known, fifth known, sixth known,
seventh known, eighth known, ninth known. Af-
ter completing this sequence, the unknown word
was treated as the first known word, the previous
ninth known word was removed from the deck,
and the second unknown word was added to the
Comparison of Relationship Between Words Retained and Intelligence
287
front of the deck. This sequence continued until
all nine words were rehearsed.
Dependent Variable
The number of words retained after 1
and 2 weeks was the dependent variable for
the study. Words were considered retained if
they were correctly verbally stated and the
correct English translation was verbally pro-
vided within3softhepresentation of the
word.
Training, Fidelity, and Interobserver
Agreement
The instructional conditions were con-
ducted by three female school psychology
graduate students. The IR method was taught
during one session of a graduate-level course
and each student conducted IR on a weekly
basis with a K-12 student as part of an inter-
vention practicum. The data collectors also par-
ticipated in 1-hr training on the TD and Inter-
spersal conditions, and the study procedures.
Approximately 25% of the sessions
were observed by the first author with a check-
list that ranged from 5 (TD) to 14 (IR) steps.
The number of correctly implemented steps
was counted, divided by the total number of
steps, and multiplied by 100. The percentage
of correct steps ranged from 93.3% to 100%,
with a mean of 99.1% correct implementation.
Interobserver agreement was also esti-
mated from observations for 25% of the as-
sessment sessions by the first author. Whether
the words and English translations were cor-
rectly stated was independently judged by
both observers. Words judged as correct or
incorrect by both observers were counted as
agreements and inconsistently judged words
were counted as disagreements. The number
of agreements was divided by the number of
agreements plus disagreements and multiplied
by 100%, which resulted in 100% interob-
server agreement.
Results
The estimate of skew for the IQ data was
⫺0.39 (SE ⫽0.51) and the kurtosis score was
⫺1.71 (SE ⫽0.99). The descriptive data for
IQ scores and the data presented in Table 1 all
include estimates of skew and kurtosis that
were less than 2.0 and generally within two
standard errors. Thus, the data were relatively
normally distributed and were analyzed para-
metrically with within-subject analyses of
variance. Estimates of effect size were com-
puted with Cohen’s (1988) dand compared to
the criteria of 0.80 for a large effect, 0.50 for
a medium effect, and 0.20 for a small effect.
The means, standard deviations, and es-
timates of skew and kurtosis for the number of
words retained with each condition are pre-
sented in Table 1. The first hypothesis pre-
dicted that the condition used would affect the
Table 1
Mean Words Retained for Each Instructional Condition After 1 and 2
Weeks
Traditional Interspersed Incremental Rehearsal
Mean
(SD) Skew Kurtosis
Mean
(SD) Skew Kurtosis
Mean
(SD) Skew Kurtosis F
1 week 2.05 (1.98) ⫺0.39 ⫺1.71 1.60 (1.88) 0.65 ⫺1.42 5.30 (2.30) 0.08 ⫺0.76 21.17*
2 weeks 1.80 (2.04) 1.37 1.27 1.15 (1.31) 1.10 0.38 4.95 (2.21) ⫺0.55 ⫺0.54 28.51*
Note. Standard error of the estimate is 0.51 for skew and 0.99 for kurtosis.
*p⬍.025.
School Psychology Review, 2009, Volume 38, No. 2
288
number of words retained. As shown in Ta-
ble 1, a significant effect was found for reten-
tion data obtained after 1 week and after 2
weeks, using a corrected alpha level .025 to
determine statistical significance. The number
of words retained for the IR condition was
more than two to three times the number of
words retained for the other two conditions.
Post hoc analyses, using a conservative alpha
level of .01, confirmed the second hypothesis
as IR led to significantly more words being
retained than the TD, t(19) ⫽6.41, p⬍.01
(d⫽1.51), and interspersal, t(19) ⫽5.66, p⬍
.01 (d⫽1.76), conditions after 1 week. How-
ever, there was no significant difference af-
ter 1 week between the TD and interspersal,
t(19) ⫽0.66, p⫽.52 (d⫽0.23), conditions.
Post hoc analyses after 2 weeks again found
that the IR condition led to significantly more
words being retained than the TD, t(19) ⫽5.69,
p⬍.01 (d⫽1.48), and interspersal, t(19) ⫽
7.44, p⬍.01 (d⫽2.09), conditions, but there
was no significant difference between the TD
and Interspersal, t(19) ⫽1.18, p⫽.25 (d⫽
0.38), conditions.
The third hypothesis predicted that the
correlation coefficient between IQ and the
number of words retained after 1 and 2 weeks
would be smallest for the IR condition. Be-
cause participating students had IQ scores that
fell one to three standard deviations below the
national mean, the standard deviation for the
sample (9.79) was much less than the standard
deviation for the population (15). Thus, corre-
lation coefficients were corrected for range
restriction using the formula provided by Mur-
phy and Davidshofer (2001), and are pre-
sented in Table 2. The corrected coefficients
for the TD condition were positive and low to
moderate in magnitude, but only the corrected
coefficient for the Interspersal condition af-
ter 1 week was significant, using an alpha
level of .01 to reduce the likelihood of II error
with the multiple correlations. The coefficients
for the interspersal condition were also mod-
erate in magnitude but negative in direction.
Finally, the corrected coefficients for the IR
condition were small to negligible and sug-
gested little relationship between IQ and the
number of words retained.
Discussion
The current replication of the MacQuar-
rie et al. (2002) study found results consistent
with the previous research. The IR condition
led to two to three times more words retained
than TD or Interspersal. The number of words
retained by seventh-grade students after 1
week in the previous study was 3.84
(TD), 1.82 (interspersal), and 6.16 (IR; Mac-
Quarrie et al.). Thus, students in the current
study did not retain as many words, which is
not surprising given that the current students
were diagnosed with a disability. However,
the estimates of effect size and the uncorrected
correlation coefficients approximated the find-
ings from the previous study for the TD and IR
conditions.
These data again suggest that high OTR
presented within a high ratio of known to
unknown words led to the best retention and
Table 2
Correlation Coefficients Between Number of Words Retained and IQ for
Each Condition With Coefficients Corrected for Range Restriction
Traditional Drill Interspersal Incremental Rehearsal
RCorrected rRCorrected rrCorrected r
1 week .25 .37 ⫺.45 ⫺.61* .02 .03
2 weeks .35 .50 ⫺.31 ⫺.45 .10 .15
*p⬍.01.
Comparison of Relationship Between Words Retained and Intelligence
289
lowest correlation with IQ. Interpreting the r
coefficients as effect sizes suggests a medium
to large effect of IQ for the interspersal and
TD conditions, but a small effect for IR (Co-
hen, 1988). Thus, even among students with a
diagnosed disability and below-average IQ,
the use of an effective instructional approach
negated the effect of variations in IQ. Al-
though this is a potentially important finding,
the data do not suggest why IR outperformed
the other conditions and led to the lowest
correlation with IQ. Moreover, the correlation
coefficients for words retained and IQ were
generally larger in magnitude in the current
study than in the MacQuarrie et al. (2002)
study, which could be due to the different
samples, different interval lengths between
teaching and testing retention (1 day, 2,
days, 3 days, 7 days, and 30 days for Mac-
Quarrie et al., but 7 and 14 days it the current
study), or different constructs being correlated
(receptive vocabulary vs. IQ). It should also be
noted that the low correlation between IQ and
words retained for the IR conditions could be
related to the intervention’s intermediating ef-
fect, but could also be a statistical anomaly
resulting from distributions with similar
shapes or nonlinear relationships (Goodwin &
Leech, 2006).
Previous research found that the number
of OTRs was more closely related to retention
than the ratio of known to unknown words
(Burns, 2007a; Szadokierski & Burns, 2008),
but IR still led to better retention of learned
words than TD and interspersal when the num-
ber of OTR was held constant (Nist & Joseph,
2008). The current findings are consistent with
previous research, but additional inquiry is
needed to examine the causal mechanism of
this result.
Although a comparison of intervention
effectiveness was not the primary purpose of
the study, IR was the most effective approach
and led to two to three times more words being
retained than the other two conditions. Thus,
practitioners could confidently use IR to teach
unknown words to students with diagnosed
disabilities or below-average IQ. However,
practitioners should also consider efficiency
when selecting an intervention, which is best
determined by dividing the total amount of
learned information by the time required to
learn it (Skinner, Belfiore, & Watson, 1995).
We did not explicitly time the sessions, but the
IR condition required the most time (approx-
imately 25 min). The TD condition required
approximately 20 min to complete and the
interspersal condition required approximately
15 min. Thus, after 2 weeks, the IR condition
led to approximately 0.20 words retained per
minute (WRPM), TD led to approximately
0.10 WRPM, and Interspersal led to approxi-
mately 0.08 WRPM. Instructional efficiency
research usually relies on acquisition of the
material and has suggested that IR is less
efficient than other approaches (Skinner,
2008). However, using retention data are pref-
erable to acquisition data and likely leads to
different instructional decisions (Burns &
Sterling-Turner, 2009). It should also be noted
that the TD condition in the current study
required approximately 20 min to complete,
but required much less time in previous re-
search with nondisabled students (MacQuarrie
et al., 2002; Nist & Joseph, 2008). This was
likely because the condition was conducted
until all nine words were learned, which prob-
ably required additional repetition as com-
pared to nondisabled students. However, IR
and interspersal more closely approximated
previous time estimates.
The current study presents data that are
likely of interest to practitioners and research-
ers, but some limitations should be considered.
First, the study used Esperanto words to limit
potential learning experiences that were exter-
nal to the study. Doing so increased the inter-
nal validity of the data, but limited the external
validity of the conclusions. IR has led to in-
creased generalization of the skill using more
authentic stimuli (Burns, 2007b), but the cur-
rent study only focused on retention. More-
over, the estimates of time were not part of the
research hypotheses and were only closely
estimated. In the future, researchers could rep-
licate this study while focusing on instruc-
tional efficiency. It should also be noted that
the small sample size likely led to only one
correlation coefficient being significant and
future researchers could replicate the study
School Psychology Review, 2009, Volume 38, No. 2
290
with a larger sample. IQ data were obtained
from school records and were from assess-
ments conducted within 1 calendar year. IQ is
likely to be stable by the time students reach
the seventh and eighth grades (Sattler, 2008),
but the standardization with which those data
were collected is unknown. Finally, the stu-
dents were identified with disabilities by
school personnel based on state guidelines,
and the interpretation of those guidelines
could vary from district to district. Thus, the
specific nature of the students’ disabilities and
their strengths are unknown.
As school psychology continues to fo-
cus on academic deficits (Daly & McCurdy,
2002), the instructional technology used to
address those difficulties and the service de-
livery system must be continuously refined.
Given that school psychological services are
best delivered through a multi-tiered service
delivery system (Ysseldyke et al., 2006), it
will be common to attempt multiple interven-
tions for children until the successful instruc-
tional manipulation is found. Thus, school
psychologists need a large repertoire of inter-
ventions in their arsenal to best meet the needs
of children, and IR appears to make a solid
contribution to that collection.
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Matthew K. Burns, PhD, is an associate professor of educational psychology and coor-
dinator of the School Psychology Program at the University of Minnesota. His current
research addresses academic interventions, problem-solving teams, curriculum-based
assessment for instructional design, and utilizing all three within a response-to-interven-
tion framework.
Christina H. Boice, MA, is a doctoral candidate in school psychology at the University of
Minnesota and a school psychology intern with Mahtomedi Public Schools in Mahtomedi,
Minnesota. Her research interests involve reading comprehension assessment and inter-
vention, and the link between academic deficits and behavioral difficulties.
Date Received: November 7, 2008
Date Accepted: March 14, 2009
Action Editor: Sandra Chafouleas 䡲
School Psychology Review, 2009, Volume 38, No. 2
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