Reading Intervention for Students with ASD in the Middle Grades: An Alternating Treatment Study of Embedded Interests Reading and Expository Text Conditions

ABSTRACT

Aim

We conducted two separate but related multiple baseline with alternating treatment single-case design studies to investigate the effect of the same reading intervention for students with autism spectrum disorder being implemented under different conditions. 

Method

We conducted a researcher-implemented study in a public school (Study 1) and a teacher-implemented study in a specialized private charter school for children with ASD (Study 2). In each study, we compared a typical intervention approach with interest-based text intervention that included reading on each child’s interest area. The treatment included systematic vocabulary instruction and main-summarization strategy instruction. 

Results

Findings from Study One showed consistent increases in comprehension and vocabulary outcomes compared to baseline. In Study Two the baselines phases were unstable with small differences in mean scores detected for vocabulary during the intervention phase favoring the interest-based treatment for three of four participants.

Conclusion

The results across studies were mixed indicating the importance of taking into account contextual factors including student characteristics and learning environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism
• reading comprehension
• vocabulary
• interest.

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

All the authors of this article declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board approvals of the sponsoring institutions.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Institue of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R324A160299 to the University of California, Riverside. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.