A Cognitive Strategy Instruction to Improve Math Calculation for Children With ADHD and LD: A Randomized Controlled Study

Abstract

The authors examined the effectiveness of cognitive strategy instruction based on PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive) given by special education teachers to students with ADHD randomly assigned by classroom. Students in the experimental group were exposed to a brief cognitive strategy instruction for 10 days, which was designed to encourage development and application of effective planning for mathematical computation, whereas the comparison group received-standard math instruction. Standardized tests of cognitive processes and math achievement were given at pretest. All students completed math worksheets throughout the experimental phase. Standardized achievement tests (Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement, Third Edition, Math Fluency and Wechsler Individualized Achievement Test, Second Edition, Numerical Operations) were administered pre- and postintervention, and Math Fluency was also administered at 1 year follow-up. Large pre—post effect sizes were found for students in the experimental group but not the comparison group on math worksheets (0.85 and 0.26), Math Fluency (1.17 and 0.09), and Numerical Operations (0.40 and —0.14, respectively). At 1 year follow-up, the experimental group continued to outperform the comparison group. These findings suggest that students with ADHD evidenced greater improvement in math worksheets, far transfer to standardized tests of math (which measured the skill of generalizing learned strategies to other similar tasks), and continued advantage 1 year later when provided the PASS-based cognitive strategy instruction.