Adapted Shared Reading for Minimally Verbal Students with Autism

Background:  

Approximately 30% of children with autism remain minimally verbal despite intervention.  Literacy offers an important avenue of communication for these individuals, but almost nothing is known about their capacity to develop literacy skills or effective educational strategies.  Shared reading is a regular practice in early education settings and is widely thought to encourage language and literacy development in typically developing children, as well as those with mild disabilities.  A few studies have demonstrated that adapted shared reading may help increase early literacy skills in children with severe developmental disabilities.

Objectives:  

The current study examined the impact of teacher-led adapted shared reading activities on the engagement and story comprehension of minimally verbal 5-6 year old children with autism.  Additionally, this study addressed teacher fidelity of intervention implementation and teacher satisfaction with the intervention.  

Methods:  

A multiple baseline/alternating treatment design was used to measure student progress on story comprehension and task engagement during shared reading activities.  Four minimally verbal students with autism and three special education teachers participated.  Baseline sessions were conducted three times per week with books in their standard form and teachers were instructed to read as they normally would.  After baseline, adapted shared reading activities were conducted twice per week with books that had been modified with visual supports, three-dimensional objects and simplified text to make them more accessible to minimally verbal students.  Teachers were shown specific strategies for increasing student engagement during shared reading and asked to use them during the intervention sessions (e.g. giving student opportunities to manipulate story props or point to pictures).  Standard shared reading sessions continued to be implemented once per week (the alternating treatment component of the design) to provide a comparison of the effects of repeated exposure to shared reading without adaptations.  

Results:  

All four students showed increased story comprehension and engagement during adapted shared reading, compared with baseline and repeated un-adapted shared reading.  Average percent of session engaged was 87-100% during the adapted shared reading sessions, compared with 41-52% during the baseline sessions.  Overall PND for all students was 95%.  Average number of correct responses to story comprehension questions was 4.2-4.8 out of six during the adapted sessions compared with 1.2-2 out of six during baseline.  Overall PND for all students was 100%.  Teachers were able to easily learn strategies for increasing student engagement during these activities and had 100% fidelity of strategy implementation.  Teachers reported that they believed the adapted shared reading activities were meaningful to their students and would continue to use activities after the conclusion of the study.

Conclusions:  

Visual supports, tactile objects and specific teaching strategies offer ways for minimally verbal students to meaningfully participate in literacy activities.  Student engagement in the adapted activities was high, which is associated with better learning outcomes.  Teachers were able to quickly learn to conduct adapted shared reading and had high satisfaction with the activities.  Future research should investigate adapted shared reading activities implemented classroom-wide, as well as joint engagement, language and literacy outcomes after using such activities over time.