Locus of control and the spontaneous use of mnemonic strategies in a motor memory task.

The team worked with adults who have mild or moderate intellectual disability.

Each person tried to remember a short hand movement after a five-second pause.

Some pauses were silent. Others were filled with counting out loud.

The researchers also gave a quick quiz about who controls events in life.

They wanted to see if silent gaps and personal beliefs changed recall.

Silent gaps beat filled gaps every time.

People remembered the movement better when nothing happened during the wait.

Surprise: scores did not hinge on locus-of-control answers.

Adults with ID already used their own quiet replay trick, no pep talk needed.

Poloczek et al. (2016) saw the same thing with words.

Teens with mild ID used verbal rehearsal at their mental-age level, not their birth age.

Together the studies show strategy use is common, not rare, in this group.

Jarus et al. (2015) looks like a clash.

Kids with DCD did worse when told to focus on outside cues.

The difference is diagnosis and task.

Tal studied children with coordination disorder doing implicit learning.

Our paper studied adults with ID doing simple recall.

Quiet gaps help one group; external focus hurts the other.

Ben Mansour et al. (2026) take the idea further.

They added an eight-week mindfulness class for teens with IDD.

Motor scores jumped, showing lab insight can become real-world training.

You can stop over-prompting.

Give a brief, silent beat after you demo a job skill, a dance step, or a tooth-brushing motion.

The learner will likely replay it in mind without extra help.

No fancy script or self-talk lesson required.

Just count one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, then cue the next try.