Refining the Experimental Analysis of Academic Skills Deficits: Part I. An Investigation of Variables That Affect Generalized Oral Reading Performance

Abstract

Experimental analyses for improving reading fluency deficits have rarely targeted generalized increases in academic responding. As a consequence, the variables that may help students to generalize newly learned forms of academic responding like reading are not well understood. Furthermore, experimental analyses of reading fluency interventions have not systematically examined difficulty level as a variable that may affect instructional outcomes. The experiment reported in this paper expands (a) the measurement of the dependent variables to include generalized increases across tasks (reading passages) and (b) the combination of independent variables used to produce measurable generalized increases. The results demonstrate the importance of combining reward and instructional variables (including difficulty level) to produce generalized increases and how those variables can be meaningfully investigated prior to making treatment recommendations.

Refining the Experimental Analysis of Academic Skills Deficits: Part Ii. Use of Brief Experimental Analysis to Evaluate Reading Fluency Treatments

“…Greater differences across passages or at other levels of responding may yield different results. Nonetheless, the results are consistent with those of Daly et al (2005), who used the same procedures and found that all participants showed greater relative increases in harder materials and, for 1 participant, greater absolute levels of responding in harder materials. Therefore, future investigations will contribute to our understanding of the broader notion of instructional match by considering a wider range of performance levels and examining relative as well as absolute performance increases.…”

The Effects of Reading Fluency Interventions on the Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension Performance of Elementary Students With Learning Disabilities: A Synthesis of the Research from 2001 to 2014

“…Adult modeling, RR, and phrase drill EC increased reading rates and decreased error rates on easy and difficult generalization passages with high content overlap (Daly et al, 2005). …”

“…Word supply with RR produced higher reading rates than phonics-based feedback with RR (i.e., sounding out miscues; Watson et al, 2009). RR with phrase drill EC and syllable segmentation and blending increased WCPM and decreased EPM (Daly et al, 2005). Finally, incorporating EC feedback during paired RR yielded gains in reading rate for below-, on-, and above-grade-level texts (Yurick et al, 2006).…”

Selecting Intervention Strategies: Using Brief Experimental Analysis for Mathematics Problems

“…Research in the area of reading has required application of the treatment strategy to generalization materials in order for observable improvements to be made , suggesting generalization is not spontaneous. Furthermore, only recently has research begun to experimentally investigate the specific conditions under which generalization in reading occurs (see Daly, Bonfiglio, Mattson, Persampieri, & Foreman-Yates, 2005), and we are unaware of generalization research with mathematics. Third, it might not be surprising that Anson's performance across generalization materials was undifferentiated, albeit within the mastery range, given that the results of the BEA and extended analysis suggested his academic problems were motivational.…”