The Use of Adapted Dialogic Reading Strategies with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Kelly Whalon, Ph.D., Florida State University Jose Martinez, University of Florida Colleen Butcher, University of Florida Introduction RECALL Prompting Hierarchy Findings RECALL Prompt Choice of 3 Visuals Binary Choice Direct Model Physical Guidance Social communication and language skills of children with ASD pose a significant obstacle to literacy development Many children with ASD develop effective decoding skills, but struggle with language and reading comprehension Difficulties with reading comprehension are linked to language and social communication Cognition, language and social communication influence reading comprehension Early intervention should include language and literacy instruction that explicitly targets the skills necessary for reading comprehension Responses & Prompts RECALL Instructional Sequence RECALL Prompt using one of the CROWD/RECALL prompts Evaluate the child’s response Expand the child’s response by restating and adding more information Praise the child for a correct response Dialogic Reading + Evidence-Based Practices for Children with ASD + Instructional Targets Addressing Core Challenges Evidence-based shared reading intervention Improves oral language Increases emergent literacy skills necessary for future reading comprehension Prompts to secure joint attention Least to most prompting hierarchy Visual supports Joint attention Initiation Emotion identification Inference-making Initiation Prompts & Hierarchy Participant TOPEL Scores Concepts of Print Print Knowledge Definitional Vocabulary Phonological Awareness Early Literacy Index Pre Post Todd 92 88 55 78 63 73 62 74 1 4 Lucas 116 72 84 60 85 93 6 12 Joel 117 115 79 86 97 11 20 Paul 119 68 82 59 75 89 3 DR Prompts Dialogic Reading Prompts: CROWD Defined Completion A blank is left at the end of a sentence Recall Questions about the events or main idea Open-Ended Ask the child what is happening in the story Wh-Questions Focus on vocabulary from the book Distancing Ask children to relate events from the story to their own experiences 3 Question Cards Verbal Prompt Binary Choice Direct Model Physical Guidance Initiations All prompts and the instructional sequence are paired with visual supports RECALL Prompts Methods Emotion Identification Child identifies how a character is feeling or how he/she would feel in a similar situation Wh- Inference Wh question question prompts that require prediction Secure Attention A verbal prompt paired with a gestural prompt to establish a common point of reference (“Look” while pointing to a picture in the book) Intentional Pause Before or after turning a page, the teacher pauses for 3-5 seconds while looking expectantly at the child Initiation Prompt Three scripted question cards are provided and the child is prompted to initiate a question about the story Design: Single subject multiple baseline design Baseline – Reading aloud and asking questions without RECALL prompts and hierarchy Intervention –RECALL prompts and hierarchy (8 weeks, 3 days a week for 15-20 min) Maintenance – Return to baseline conditions Reliability: 30% across phases. Ranged 67-100%. Average 89-95%. Setting: Special education preschool setting Participants Child Diagnosis PLS-5 TOPEL BDI AC EC TLS PK DV PA ELI DQ Todd Autism 83 57 67 92 55 63 62 75 Lucas 70 52 51 116 72 60 78 65 Joel DD 61 56 117 79 85 88 Paul 68 50 115 59 81 Summary Participants increased their ability to respond to questions during shared reading Increased their joint attention and verbal initiations Demonstrated gains on a standardized emergent literacy measure Development of this poster was supported with funding from the University of Florida, CRIF award. For more information, please contact Kelly Whalon (kwhalon@fsu.edu)