etadd_47(3) - Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities

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creased to 85% representing a 43% rise over the baseline mean. Visual analysis showed considerable and stable progress during the intervention phase ranging from 50% to 100% accuracy. Sarah. Sarah’s baseline accuracy ranged from 25%–75% with an average and median score of 50% over four baseline sessions. With the introduction of intervention, this level rapidly increased to 89% representing a 39% increase over the baseline mean. Visual analysis showed noteworthy and stable comprehension accuracy during intervention ranging from 75%–100%. Ellen. Ellen’s baseline scores indicated her comprehension accuracy ranged from 25%– 75% with an average of 45%. With the introduction of intervention, this level rapidly increased to 75% representing a 30% increase over the baseline mean. Visual analysis revealed considerable and stable comprehension accuracy during intervention ranging from 50–100%. William. William participated in six baseline sessions and demonstrated a relatively stable and low accuracy on comprehension questions. His average baseline accuracy was 17% with a median of 0% and a range of 0%–75%. With the introduction of intervention, this level rapidly increased to 75% representing a 58% increase over the baseline mean. Visual analysis indicated considerable and stable comprehension accuracy during intervention ranging from 50–100%. Social Validity Social validity interviews confirmed the functionality, social acceptance, and the practicality of the intervention used during this study. In the pre-study interview, the teacher indicated the importance of her student’s comprehension abilities on a daily basis. This sentiment was confirmed by two of the four students. When asked about supports used to aid in auditory comprehension, the teacher mentioned that multiple supports including picture symbols, gestures, and object use were necessary. One student, Ellen, also mentioned she would “ask the teacher to help” when she did not understand something. Prior to the study, the teacher and students agreed that pictures or other visual symbols help them understand what they heard. Following the intervention, students were asked to identify their favorite stories. Three students chose various favorites (e.g. the stories about dolphins, cable cars, and horse shoes) while William mentioned he liked them all. Two students expressed a specific story they liked the least, one did could not think of a least favorite, and Sarah mentioned that she “just liked them all.” The teacher echoed her satisfaction with the stories used. The use of age appropriate content and new, informative topics for students were cited as reasons. Students all responded they would like to use the picture symbol plus discussion intervention support more at school. The teacher also favored the intervention and saw it as a realistic intervention for the classroom. She added that she would likely use the intervention with groups of students simultaneously rather than in individualized instructional settings so as to maximize classroom support staff, while still providing the intervention. Discussion In light of the multiple access barriers for middle school students with moderate intellectual disability to typical age-appropriate texts, intervention research is essential (Browder et al., 2009; Downing, 2005; Kliewer, 1998; Kliewer et al., 2006). Access to age appropriate literature is essential for these students to experience the vocabulary-rich, sufficiently mature, and socially acceptable texts with increased comprehension (Browder et al., 2009; Kluth & Darmondy-Latham, 2003). Additionally, access to these texts foster an improved quality of life, promote high expectations, provide equitable access to instructional materials, and increase self-determination opportunities (Browder et al., 2007) Unfortunately, the use of effective strategies and appropriate materials are often not available to these students (Browder et al., 2009; Downing, 2005; Kliewer, 1998; Kliewer et al., 2006). This study investigated the effect of a combined visual- and discussion-based intervention on the comprehension abilities of middle school students with moderate intellectual disability when they were read typical age-appropriate texts. The intervention’s positive effect 368 / Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities-September 2012
was repeated across all participants in the study. Social validity interviews confirmed the importance of a comprehension-related intervention to the students and their teacher. Additionally, the interviews indicated the ease of use and practicality of this intervention for the classroom. Results indicate the intervention was successful in enhancing the comprehension abilities of students when read typical age-appropriate texts. Data also point to the usefulness of this particular intervention for increasing the comprehension abilities of students with moderate intellectual disability when read texts appropriate for their age. While all students performed more accurately during the intervention phase, Sarah displayed the most consistent and stable change in performance from baseline to intervention. During the baseline phase she was generally less than 80% accurate. But during intervention, her responses were consistently between 80% and 100%. She had the highest intervention average scores of the students with the third highest average growth. During all sessions, Sarah appeared interested and was very cooperative. She appeared to enjoy looking at the pictures and discussing the content. Frequently, she made comments about the pictures regarding what she saw, or how they related to the story. Later, Sarah indicated she enjoyed hearing all of the stories read out loud. On most occasions, Sarah answered the questions by stating the corresponding letter. Louis, the student with the most intervention sessions also experienced a rapid and relatively stable increase in comprehension scores between baseline and intervention phases (43% increase). Louis was typically willing to begin the sessions, but preferred, and was allowed, to finish any seatwork (worksheet, reading activity) before coming to the back table to work with the researcher. Louis listened intently as the stories were read and answered the questions quickly and with confidence. He rarely needed to hear the questions or options twice before responding. Louis answered questions by pointing to the corresponding letter on the answer selection sheet. Ellen also performed more accurately during intervention than in the baseline phase (39% increase). Ellen seemed to enjoy the individual sessions and on occasion spent the first few minutes prior to beginning talking about what she did or was planning to do in the current week. On a few occasions, Ellen did not answer the questions within ten seconds and needed to hear them again. She frequently answered by verbalizing the correct answer by name, often in shorthand, speaking just the key words of the answer choice. For example, in a question about why plants and animals need to adapt to the desert, she correctly responded, “so little water” for the answer choice (c) there is so little water. William exhibited the most growth (58% increase in the mean accuracy from baseline to intervention) of all participants in the study. Four out of his six baseline sessions resulted in 0% accuracy in his comprehension of the texts. He was typically quiet but came willingly and usually paused for a few seconds before answering the comprehension questions. On a few occasions, during the discussion, William responded to the question, “What do you see?” with a one word utterance through his speech generating device. It was sometimes difficult for the researcher to see the connection between his selected word and the content of the photo; however, William’s comprehension accuracy during the intervention phase suggests he did have a good understanding of the stories and was making a connection, which he considered valid and or logical, although unfamiliar to the investigator. William answered the comprehension questions typically by pointing to the letter on the physical selection sheet. Hibbing and Rankin-Erickson (2003) suggest that students benefit from visual representations accompanying unfamiliar texts. In the current investigation, images appeared to help students attend to the key content within the stories. In addition, discussing the pictures with students helped attach contextual meaning from the story to the pictures. These findings are consistent with Kucan and Beck’s (1997) review of articles on the effects of discussion on reading comprehension. These authors found that teacher supported discussion, such as that used in the study, was effective in enhancing the comprehension abilities of students without disabilities. Additionally in regards to discussion, Moats (2002) described the benefits of modeling and prac- Comprehension of Typical Texts / 369
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Education and Training in Autism an
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ities. Scholars have argued that do
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discussions were held with 12 addit
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TABLE 1 A Sample of Community Funds
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et al., 2007). At the school, stude
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students opportunities to work and
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Browder, D. M., & Cooper-Duffy, K.
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of words, and in the short term wer
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TABLE 3 Word Lists List No. Trainin
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TABLE 6 Pairwise Comparisons on Pos
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Word Identification or Word Attack
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erate to severe disabilities. Excep
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ess in a variety of subjects includ
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TABLE 1 Target Vocabulary Words by
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Figure 1. Example of PowerPoint Sli
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TABLE 3 Mean Percentage of Correct
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Figure 4. Jake’s percentages corr
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man-Martin et al. (2005) by demonst
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used in the study that did not foll
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lected. Stories were read in a quie
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y determining the number of interva
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with the removal of the interventio
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Accordingly, recent research has in
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Method Participants Four male child
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TABLE 2 Play Scale - Developmental
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elated utterances, which were used
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Figure 1. Ian’s Progress in Play
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Figure 3. Ryan’s Progress in Play
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Figure 5. Social Validity: Average
Page 67 and 68: (2000). A comparison of video model
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Page 71 and 72: Method Participants Four high schoo
Page 73 and 74: TABLE 1 Task Analyses for all Tasks
Page 75 and 76: Figure 1. Holly multiple baseline g
Page 77 and 78: Figure 3. Norman multiple baseline
Page 79 and 80: ing at photographs. Jake only requi
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Page 83 and 84: table video aids may lead to greate
Page 85 and 86: TABLE 2 Task Analyses Including Vid
Page 87 and 88: table.” During the session, the t
Page 89 and 90: Figure 2. Percent of steps with err
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Page 93 and 94: our students, it may have been diff
Page 97 and 98: TABLE 2 Participants Demographic Da
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Page 101 and 102: TABLE 4 Total Number of Items Answe
Page 103 and 104: Figure 2. Total number of procedura
Page 105 and 106: serve both cognitive (e.g., self in
Page 107 and 108: and quasi-experimental designs for
Page 111 and 112: & Cobb, 2002). Generalization, the
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Page 115 and 116: Procedure Baseline. In this multipl
Page 117: condition for each student. With th
Page 121 and 122: Boning, R. A. (1997). SRA Specific
Page 125 and 126: TABLE 1 Student demographic informa
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Page 129 and 130: TABLE 2 Content Standards, Alternat
Page 131 and 132: Student Achievement Figures 3-6 pro
Page 133 and 134: Figure 4. Student data across math
Page 135 and 136: Figure 6. Student data across math
Page 137 and 138: A second limitation of the current
Page 141 and 142: y students with intellectual disabi
Page 143 and 144: TABLE 1 Studies of Mathematics Inte
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