Efficacy of the pause procedure for enhancing learning disabled and nondisabled college students' long- and short-term recall of facts presented through lecture

Despite growing numbers of learning disabled students in college classes, few empirically validated strategies for use by faculty when lecturing these students have appeared in the professional literature. The effect of a pausing procedure (three 2-minute pauses spaced at logical breaks during videotaped lectures) on students' performance of three dependent variables (immediate free recall of facts, long-term free recall of facts, and performance on objective tests) was determined using analysis of variance with repeated measures and follow-up t-tests. Performances of two mixed groups of learning disabled (LD) (n = 15) and nondisabled (ND) (n = 15) students were compared after lectures both without pauses and with pauses. Findings indicate the pause procedure is effective for enhancing student performance on immediate free-recall and objective test measures. The procedure may also be applicable to a variety of lecture situations.