1. 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 min)
Maintenance – Return to baseline conditions
Reliability: 30% across phases. Ranged %. 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