Endurance of Multiplication Fact Fluency for Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between a critical learning outcome of behavioral fluency and endurance, by comparing the effects of two practice procedures on multiplication facts two through nine. The first procedure, called whole time practice trial, consisted of an uninterrupted 1 minute practice time. The second procedure, endurance building practice trials, had three 20 second practice trials. A total of 3 students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder participated. Results indicated that multiplication facts with the endurance building practice trials produced more efficient learning when compared to the whole time practice trial procedure for all 3 participants. Additionally, results show that even with the amount of practice time being equal, 1 minute in both conditions, on average participants practiced 30% more problems with the endurance building practice trials procedure than they did with the whole time practice trial procedure.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Morningside Math Facts Curriculum on Fluency, Stability, Endurance and Application Outcomes

“…Research investigating critical outcomes to date focuses primarily on application and retention with fewer examinations of endurance reported in the literature (Brady & Kubina, 2010). To date, no empirical investigations of this outcome have been reported in the literature.…”

“…A number of research studies to date have demonstrated the attainment of fluent performances as a result of frequency-building with mathematics skills (Hartnedy et al, 2005;Poncy, et al, 2010). Further, the attainment of fluent performances with component mathematics skills has been associated with improvements in endurance (Brady & Kubina, 2010;McDowell & Keenan, 2001) and application (Bucklin et al, 2000;Cavallini & Perini, 2009;Chiesa & Roberston, 2000;Kubina et al, 2004) as well as overall mathematical ability (Carr & Alexeev, 2011;Carr et al, 2008 …”

“…Despite the importance of such skills within educational settings, the ability to attain these outcomes as a consequence of fluency-based instruction has only been demonstrated in a small number of research studies (Brady & Kubina, 2010;McDowell & Keenan, 2001). Kubina and Yurich (2012) describe application as the ability to apply one or more element behaviors or pre-requisite skills to more complex behaviors or skills once a specific frequency with those skills is achieved (e.g., the ability to recognise or read letters at a high frequency will result in an improvement in applying this skill to decoding full words).…”

“…Four worksheets containing problems that were presented during the intervention with the Experimental Group were presented with one hundred problems on each. Measures of both rate of correct responding (Brady & Kubina, 2010) and on-task behavior (McDowell & Keenan, 2001) were recorded.…”

Effects of Fluency Versus Accuracy Training on Endurance and Retention of Assembly Tasks by Four Adolescents with Developmental Disabilities

“…The potential effects of fluency instruction include (a) greater retention of skills taught (Binder 1996;Ivarie 1986), (b) better application or generalization of learned skills to new stimuli or situations (Binder and Bloom 1989;Johnson and Layng 1992), (c) higher rates of responding over a prolonged period of time (i.e., endurance) without the need for extrinsic reinforcement (Binder 1996;Binder et al 1990;Brady and Kubina 2010;McDowell and Keenan 2001), (d) higher rates of accurate responding in the presence of distractions (i.e., stability) or longer periods of attention (Binder 1996;Bloom 1986), and (e) faster learning of more complex skills involving combinations of ''fluent'' component skills (Haughton and Kovacs, as cited in Binder 1996;Van Houten 1980).…”