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Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills to a Child with Autism Using Behaviour Skills Training

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Abstract

A multiple probe design across skills was used to examine the effects of behaviour skills training (BST) on teaching four reading comprehension skills (predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing) to a 7th grade student with autism. Following baseline, the student received 12 sessions of BST during which each skill was taught to criterion. At each session, data was also collected on the accuracy of oral responses to 10 comprehension questions. BST was associated with clear gains in the participant’s performance on each comprehension skill, along with concomitant gains in reading comprehension both on the daily probes and a standardized measure. Skills maintained at follow-up support the conclusion that BST was effective in improving the comprehension skills of a child with autism.

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Acknowledgments

All authors provided feedback on the manuscript drafts, and read and approved the final manuscript. Special thanks to Jasmine Chung for her assistance with data collection.

Author Contributions

BS formulated the research aims and hypothesis, collected the data, undertook data analysis, and drafted the manuscript; DM conceived of the study, initiated the ethics approval, participated in its design and coordination, assisted with participant recruitment and helped draft the manuscript; BF and AA participated in the design and analysis of the data and helped draft the manuscript; MB and DE participated in the design and assisted with participant recruitment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Krongold Centre, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Binita D. Singh, Dennis W. Moore, Brett E. Furlonger, Angelika Anderson, Margherita L. Busacca & Derek L. English

Authors
  1. Binita D. Singh
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  2. Dennis W. Moore
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  3. Brett E. Furlonger
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  4. Angelika Anderson
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  5. Margherita L. Busacca
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  6. Derek L. English
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Binita D. Singh.

Ethics declarations

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with, and met the requirements of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. This project (CF16/1643–2016000860) was approved by the institutional review board on 28 June, 2016.

Informed Consent

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

Appendix: Sample Probes and Responses for Comprehension-Fostering Skills

Appendix: Sample Probes and Responses for Comprehension-Fostering Skills

Prediction

I wonder what this story is about. Do you have any idea?/I wonder what’s going to happen next. What do you think?/I’m trying to think about what else could happen. What do you think?

Correct response (Sample): Looking at the picture when those men on horses, I think the story is about knights/Based on the title, I think the story is about Mary’s first day at school/I think the men are going to escape from the jungle in the next paragraph.

Questioning

I wonder what somebody could ask us about what we just read. What do you think?

Correct response (Sample): Where did the Great Fire of London start?/Who came to surprise Tom on his birthday?/Why did the ship sink?

Clarification

There are some new/big/confusing words/sentences here…What do you think? OR This passage/section had some new words/phrases. Did you think so too?

Correct Response (Sample): What is ‘astounding’?/What does ‘chip on his shoulder’ mean?

Summarizing

I’m trying to figure out how we could sum up what we just read. Do you know how?/What do you think the gist of this paragraph was?/How do you think we could best describe what we just read?/What do you think were the key points in this paragraph?

Correct Response (Sample): The Great Fire of London started in the baker’s shop, killed over 200 people, and burnt down many nearby buildings.

Note We did not use the term main idea when probing for summarizing in Baseline as that was the term used when explaining what a summary was during BST instruction.

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Singh, B.D., Moore, D.W., Furlonger, B.E. et al. Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills to a Child with Autism Using Behaviour Skills Training. J Autism Dev Disord 47, 3049–3058 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3229-7

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