Faculty and students presented at ASHA 2022 in New Orleans, LA.
Improving Literacy Outcomes for Individuals with Complex Communication Needs
Literacy skills are tremendously important in today’s society; they provide a means to enhance education, improve employment opportunities, develop social relationships, access the Internet, foster personal expression, and provide enjoyable leisure activities. Literacy skills are even more important for individuals who have complex communication needs and have limited speech. Being able to read and write allow individuals who require AAC a means to communicate anything they want. Unfortunately most of literacy curricula require students to provide oral responses; these programs are not appropriate for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other special needs who have limited speech. There is an urgent need to develop effective, research-based interventions to teach literacy skills to individuals with complex communication needs.
At Penn State, we have been investigating ways to effectively teach literacy skills to individuals with complex communication needs.
There is on-going, long-term work regarding literacy intervention based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel. Accordingly, it targets a wide range of skills including phonological awareness, letter sound correspondences, decoding, sight word recognition, shared reading, and reading comprehension skills as well as spelling and writing skills. The intervention applies principles of effective instruction and provides numerous opportunities for students to practice skills within meaningful literacy activities that have been individualized to be accessible for the learner’s means of understanding and expressing him or herself. To date, children with autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, developmental apraxia and multiple disabilities have benefited tremendously from the literacy intervention, including children ages 3-16 years of age. There are multiple free web resources available which provide comprehensive overviews of this approach.
Effects of T2L on single-word reading of individuals with ASD (Caron et al., 2021)
Caron and colleagues demonstrated how T2L features can increase single-word reading in individuals with ASD and CCN. Publication date updated to 10/8/21 when free on PubMed (originally published 4/29/21).
Video VSDs with T2L: Effects on single-word reading by an adolescent with cerebral palsy (Mandak et al., 2020)
Mandak et al. evaluated the impact of use of T2L features within video VSDs on single-word reading with an adolescent with cerebral palsy. (Free on PubMed, 9-15-21)
Effects of dynamic text and speech output on the word reading skills of young children with IDD (Boyle et al., 2021)
Boyle, S., McNaughton, D., Light, J., Babb, S., & Chapin, S. E. (2021). The effects of shared e-Book reading with dynamic text and speech output on the single-word reading skills of young children with developmental disabilities. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online), 52(1), 426–435. • FREE on PubMed Background Shared book reading provides a context for single word reading […]
Effects of shared reading on language and literacy skills of children with ASD (Boyle et al., 2019)
Boyle et al. completed a systematic review to investigate the impact of shared reading on early language and literacy skills for children with ASD.
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