Sound arithmetic: Auditory cues in the rehabilitation of impaired fact retrieval

Abstract

The present single case study describes the rehabilitation of an acquired impairment of multiplication fact retrieval. In addition to a conventional drill approach, one set of problems was preceded by auditory cues while the other half was not. After extensive repetition, non-specific improvements could be observed for all trained problems (e.g., 3 × 7) as well as for their non-trained complementary problems (e.g., 7 × 3). Beyond this general improvement, specific therapy effects were found for problems trained with auditory cues. These specific effects were attributed to an involvement of implicit memory systems and/or attentional processes during training. Thus, the present results demonstrate that cues in the training of arithmetic facts do not have to be visual to be effective.

This project was supported by the START program of the faculty of Medicine at the RWTH Aachen University (AZ 160/05), and by the EU Marie-Curie RTN ‘NUMBRA’ proposal Nr.504927. We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.