Abstract
This study investigated the effects of a parent-implemented dialogic reading approach—Reading to Engage Children with Autism in Language and Learning (RECALL)—on the engagement in reading and inference-making ability for preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thirty-one preschoolers (mean age = 5.90 years, SD = 0.69; 26 boys, 5 girls) were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Six weeks of RECALL significantly enhanced story comprehension, emotion knowledge, and reading engagement among preschoolers in the treatment group. This might be the first randomized controlled trial testing the effects of RECALL on children with ASD. Our findings suggest that additional instructional support such as the application of a prompting hierarchy during dialogic reading might help children with ASD reap greater benefits from shared book reading.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank SAHK* for their assistance in subject recruitment. We would also like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the families who participated in this study. This work was funded by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong. (*SAHK is a non-profit charitable organization in Hong Kong which dedicatedly provides a wide range of rehabilitation services for persons with disabilities.)
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This work was funded by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.
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JYTL participated in the design and coordination of the study, performed the measurement and statistical analysis, and helped to draft the manuscript; KKS conceived the study, participated in its design, performed the statistical analysis, interpreted the data, and revised the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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J. Y. T. Lo and K. K. M. Shum declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.
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Lo, J.Y.T., Shum, K.KM. Brief Report: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of RECALL (Reading to Engage Children with Autism in Language and Learning) for Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 51, 2146–2154 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04692-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04692-0