Effects of error correction during assessment probes on the acquisition of sight words for students with moderate intellectual disabilities

Abstract

in press) Teaching the reading of connected text through sight-word instruction to students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Simultaneous prompting is an errorless learning strategy designed to reduce the number of errors students make; however, research has shown a disparity in the number of errors students make during instructional versus probe trials. This study directly examined the effects of error correction versus no error correction during probe trials on the effectiveness and efficiency of simultaneous prompting on the acquisition of sight words by three middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities. A singlecase adapted alternating treatments design (Sindelar, Rosenberg, & Wilson, 1985) was employed to examine the effects of error correction during probe trials in order to reduce error rates. A functional relation was established for two of the three students for the use of error correction during probe sessions to reduce error rates. Error correction during assessment probes required fewer sessions to criterion, resulted in fewer probe errors, resulted in a higher percentage of correct responding on the next subsequent trial, and required less total probe time. For two of the three students, probes with error correction resulted in a more rapid acquisition rate requiring fewer sessions to criterion.

Using an iTouch to Teach Core Curriculum Words and Definitions: Efficacy and Social Validity

“…The quality of the material conveyed is more dependent upon the content and in its presentation than the medium itself. In this case, the use of a controlled stimulus (Graff & Green, 2004), constant time delay response prompting (Dogoe, Banda, Lock, & Feinstein, 2011;Head, Collins, Schuster, & Ault, 2011); error correction (Goodson, Sigafoos, O'Reilly, Cannella, & Lancioni, 2007;Waugh, Alberto, & Fredrick, 2011); and differential reinforcement (Auld, Belfiore, & Scheeler, 2010;Sira & Fryling, 2012) seemed to mitigate any reinforcement effect produced by engaging with a preferred instructional medium. The instructional method, not the instructional medium, has the greatest impact on learning outcomes.…”

Equating and Assigning Targets in the Adapted Alternating Treatments Design: Review of Special Education Journals

“…This may be further complicated by instances in which authors appeared to equate targets across conditions, but did not explicitly endorse these strategies. For example, Waugh et al (2011) did not report using any specific method for equating target sets; however, further analysis of their target list suggests that the sets were equated based on first and overlapping sounds. Future research might further evaluate studies that included target sets to identify potential methods for equating target sets which may not have been endorsed by the authors.…”

Teaching Children with Intellectual Disabilities: Analysis of Research-Based Recommendations

“…Although sight word teaching is efficient (Burns, 2007;Coleman et al, 2012;Waugh et al, 2011), decoding strategies have also proven effective in children with mild intellectual disabilities (Riepl et al, 2008) or students with moderate intellectual disability (Bradford et al, 2006;Peterson et al, 2008;Waugh et al, 2009). Phonics-based instruction can be presented efficiently in children's early school careers (Riepl et al, 2008) or even to adolescents who have experienced previous failure (Peterson et al, 2008).…”

“…Methods such as drill models with increased repetition (Burns, 2007), the technology-based Literacy by Design approach for children (Coyne et al, 2012), teacher-directed and computer-assisted constant time delay (Coleman et al, 2012), and simultaneous prompting for teaching letter-sound correspondences and blending skills (Waugh et al, 2009(Waugh et al, , 2011 were effective. Staples and Edmister (2012) strongly recommended using process and social interaction models in writing activities as an approach in which the process of collaboration is as relevant as the product.…”