etadd_47(3) - Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities

ticing discussion in relation to texts to increase
and support the development of comprehension
for older students who struggle
with reading.
Limitations and Future Research
One limitation of this study was the exclusive
use of multiple-choice questions as a measure
of student comprehension. While the students
in this study did prove their ability to accurately
respond in a multiple-choice format
prior to participation, the complexities involved
in using multiple-choice responses to
express comprehension could exclude other
students with moderate or severe intellectual
disability from replicating the effects of the
intervention. For instance, one student, who
may have benefited from this intervention,
was specifically excluded from this study due
to her repeated inaccuracy in answering the
novel multiple-choice questions. And several
other students in the classroom were not recommended
for participation by the teacher
due to their inconsistency in responding to
questions. Future research in this area should
focus on an expanded approach for assessing
student comprehension of read aloud texts.
While two individuals separately reviewed
the photo sets to ensure the accuracy of their
representative connection to the texts, this
evaluation did not sufficiently address the
need for consistency in identifying the critical
representative concepts of a text or selecting
accurate representations from photos. In this
study, main ideas and concepts were selected
from each story by the first author. These
main ideas and concepts were then used as
the basis for selecting representative photos.
While this process did prove reliably representative
among the raters and popular among
the students for the short texts used, it may
not have the same effect on more elaborate
texts (e.g. novels, biographies). Future research
should include more precise and formulaic
approaches to the process of selecting
key themes and representative images for text.
The discussion portion of the intervention
was loosely based. Sessions began by asking
each student to comment on the photos and
continued with an unscripted description of
each photo followed by a conversation with
the student regarding how the photos repre-
sented the texts. While the discussion appeared
to have a beneficial effect on the student’s
comprehension abilities of the texts
read aloud, the lack of structure utilized is
deemed a limitation in terms of research replication
and application in the classroom. Unstructured
discussions have the potential to
not only vary in methodology and results, but
also to detract from the main purpose of the
intervention, which is to help students comprehend
text read out loud. Future research
in the combined picture symbol plus discussion
intervention should examine the use of
structure interviewing strategies to provide increased
consistency in the discussion portion
of this intervention.
Fifteen short expository and narrative high
interest stories were used as the age-appropriate
literature in this study. While the content
appeared to hold students’ interest and attention,
using longer texts such as age-appropriate
novels, magazine articles, or newspapers
may provide more credibility to the robustness
of the present intervention. Future studies using
this intervention should explore its effectiveness
with longer, more commonly accessed
texts such as popular adolescent
novels, academic textbooks, or newspapers.
Finally, caution should be used when interpreting
the results of this study due to the
small number of participants involved. While
this study contributes to the literature on access
for students with moderate intellectual
disability to age-appropriate texts, additional
research on this particular intervention and as
well as variations of it, should be conducted to
promote generalizability of these results.
References
Al Otaiba, S., & Hosp, M. K. (2004). Providing
effective literacy instruction to students with
down syndrome. Teaching Exceptional Children,
36(4), 28–35.
Allor, J. H., Mathes, P. G., Roberts, K., Jones, F. G.,
& Champlin, T. M. (2010). Teaching students
with moderate intellectual disabilities to read: An
experimental examination of a comprehensive
reading intervention. Education and Training in
Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 45, 3–22.
Bellon, M. L., Ogletree, B. T., & Harn, W. E. (2000).
Repeated storybook reading as a language intervention
for children with autism. Focus on Autism
and Other Developmental Disabilities, 15, 52–58.
370 / Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities-September 2012