Vocabulary Instruction Embedded in Narrative Intervention: A Repeated Acquisition Design Study With First Graders at Risk of Language-Based Reading Difficulty.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of vocabulary instruction embedded in the narrative intervention on the immediate and retained definitional knowledge of taught words for first graders at risk for language-related reading difficulties. METHOD: We employed a repeated acquisition design with innovative quality features and supplemental statistics with 11 treatment students and three control students. In the context of the school's multitiered system of supports, treatment students received 30-min small group interventions, 4 days a week for 12 weeks. Intervention involved story retelling and personal story generation lessons, both of which emphasized the learning and practicing of target vocabulary words in each story. Pre- and postprobes of the taught definitions were conducted every week. RESULTS: According to visual analysis conventions of single-case research, there was a consistent pattern of improvement from pre- to postprobes for all treatment participants, but for none of the control participants. Retention was also consistently observed, when measured at Week 13. Supplemental statistics confirmed that large effects were associated with the intervention. CONCLUSION: Vocabulary instruction embedded in narrative intervention led to meaningful acquisition and retention of taught vocabulary for students at risk of language-based reading difficulty.

Efficacy of a Supplemental Small-Group Early Literacy Intervention Implemented by Early Childhood Educators.

PURPOSE: Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are fundamental building blocks for literacy development. We identified preschoolers with persistent delays in these skills and evaluated the efficacy of a supplemental curriculum to remediate deficits in early literacy skills. METHOD: Using a cluster design, 21 classrooms were randomly assigned to early literacy versus language intervention conditions. Sixty children identified through fall semester assessments of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge were enrolled in small-group instruction. Teachers completed eLearning modules, used a digital platform to enter data and facilitate data-based decision making, received practice-based coaching, and delivered 12 weekly units of an early literacy curriculum. Comparison teachers delivered similarly administered small-group language instruction. RESULTS: Large effects were evident for letter sounds, phoneme segmentation, first sound, and first sound fluency measures (d = 0.92, 4.77, 1.15, and 1.50, respectively), and nonsignificant, small effects for letter naming and blending measures (d = 0.26 and 0.27). DISCUSSION: This early literacy intervention package had practical benefits, with 90% of experimental group preschoolers exceeding the phonemic awareness benchmark for beginning kindergarten compared to 45% in the comparison group, for example. Providing preschool teachers with tools and support for implementing a tiered approach to early literacy intervention holds promise for producing impressive gains in skills required for children to succeed in later schooling.

Indices of Narrative Language Associated with Disability.

Narratives skills are associated with long-term academic and social benefits. While students with disabilities often struggle to produce complete and complex narratives, it remains unclear which aspects of narrative language are most indicative of disability. In this study, we examined the association between a variety of narrative contents and form indices and disability. Methodology involved drawing 50 K-3 students with Individual Education Programs (IEP) and reported language concerns from a large diverse sample (n = 1074). Fifty typically developing (TD) students were matched to the former group using propensity score matching based on their age, gender, grade, mother's education, and ethnicity. Narrative retells and generated language samples were collected and scored for Narrative Discourse and Sentence Complexity using a narrative scoring rubric. In addition, the number of different words (NDW), subordination index (SI), and percentage of grammatical errors (%GE) were calculated using computer software. Results of the Mixed effect model revealed that only Narrative Discourse had a significant effect on disability, with no significant effect revealed for Sentence Complexity, %GE, SI, and NDW. Additionally, Narrative Discourse emerged as the sole significant predictor of disability. At each grade, there were performance gaps between groups in the Narrative Discourse, Language Complexity, and SI. Findings suggest that difficulty in Narrative Discourse is the most consistent predictor of disability.

Impact of Discourse Type and Elicitation Task on Language Sampling Outcomes.

PURPOSE: Language sampling is a critical component of language assessments. However, there are many ways to elicit language samples that likely impact the results. The purpose of this study was to examine how different discourse types and elicitation tasks affect various language sampling outcomes. METHOD: A diverse group of K-3 students (N = 1,037) contributed eight spoken language samples in four elicitation conditions: (a) expository generation, (b) expository retell, (c) narrative generation, and (d) narrative retell. Samples were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded for number of total words, number of different words, mean length of utterance in words (MLUW), and number of clauses per communication unit (i.e., Subordination Index [SI]). RESULTS: Narrative retell and expository generation conditions yielded the largest samples with the greatest lexical diversity when compared to narrative generation and expository retell. MLUW was higher in expository conditions, but mean SI was higher in narrative conditions. For both measures of syntax, narrative retell and expository generation yielded the highest mean scores. For each outcome, there were expected increases corresponding to grades; however, the differences faded between second and third grade. CONCLUSION: As a component of language assessments, clinicians' selection of language sampling procedures will impact the sample length, lexical diversity, utterance length, and syntactical complexity of the samples. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24185649.

The Effects of a Multitiered System of Language Support on Kindergarten Oral and Written Language: A Large-Scale Randomized Controlled Trial.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this randomized controlled trial was to examine the effects of a multitiered system of language support (MTSLS) on kindergarteners' narrative retelling, personal stories, writing, and expository language. METHOD: Participants were 686 kindergarten students from four school districts in the United States. Twenty-eight classrooms were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 337 students) or control (n = 349 students) conditions. The treatment group received 14 weeks of oral narrative language instruction using Story Champs, a multitiered language program. Classroom teachers delivered large group (Tier 1) instruction for 15-20 min a day for 4 weeks. After this short-duration whole-class instruction, speech-language pathologists began small group Story Champs (Tier 2) intervention with a random sample of students who did not make adequate progress from the large group instruction (n = 49). These students received Tier 2 intervention for 20 min twice a week in addition to continued Tier 1 instruction. RESULTS: Results indicated that the students in the treatment group had significantly higher scores on all outcome measures compared to the students in the control group. Analyses of outcomes from the 49 students who received Tier 2 intervention compared to a matching sample of at-risk control students revealed that the treatment group had significantly higher scores on narrative retells, personal stories, and expository retells. When compared to matched average-performing and advanced-performing control peers, the students who received Tier 2 intervention had significantly higher narrative retell scores and no longer had significantly lower personal story, expository, or writing scores. CONCLUSION: This effectiveness study demonstrated that MTSLS can lead to meaningful improvements in kindergarteners' oral and written language skills, even helping at-risk students catch up to high-achieving peers.

Humble Behaviorism Redux.

The need to bring behavior analysis to scale is no more obvious or urgent than now. Collaboration between behavior analysts and healthcare workers, educators, policymakers, mental health clinicians, social workers, and so many other professionals is critical to reaching under-resourced and traditionally marginalized populations. First, however, interprofessional collaboration must be adopted widely and reinforced within the behavior analytic community. Disciplinary centrism and hubris pose barriers to effective interprofessional collaboration, leading one to assume the position that practitioners of the same discipline are better trained and smarter than those of a different field. However, cultural humility (Wright, Behavior Analysis in Practice, 12(4), 805-809, 2019) is an alternative to disciplinary centrism that allows professionals to retain identities born of cultural histories and training (Pecukonis, Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 40(3), 211-220, 2020). Furthermore, cultural reciprocity is a process of self-observation and collaborative inquiry that involves questioning one's own assumptions and forces individuals (and professions) to confront the contradictions between their values and their practices (Kalyanpur & Harry, 1999). In this paper, we revisit the call for Humble Behaviorism first made by Alan Neuringer in 1991 and the recommendations of fellow behavior analysts since. Specifically, we introduce a framework of cultural reciprocity to guide humble behaviorists as they acquire behaviors necessary to establish and maintain productive interprofessional relationships. We encourage them to act on their ethical and moral duties to address social problems of global concern and bring behavior analysis to scale.

Ten Instructional Design Efforts to Help Behavior Analysts Take Up the Torch of Direct Instruction.

Although behavior analysts are trained in discrete trial instruction, other instructional approaches like Direct Instruction are underutilized in behavior analytic practice. Direct Instruction is a specialized technology that capitalizes on sophisticated instructional design and highly effective delivery strategies. What makes Direct Instruction so powerful is that it emphasizes the development of generative repertoires and establishes them efficiently. The purpose of this article is to introduce 10 critical instructional design efforts that behavior analysts can use in their practice, regardless of the population they serve and repertoires they build. The 10 instructional design efforts are summarized in a Direct Instruction Planning Guide. Behavior analysts can follow this sequence of design efforts and refer to the guiding questions as they develop efficient instruction for their learners. In doing so, behavior analysts can take up the torch of Direct Instruction, extend this remarkable instructional approach into their research and practice, and strengthen the behavioral technology available to behavior analytic practitioners.

How to Be RAD: Repeated Acquisition Design Features that Enhance Internal and External Validity.

The Repeated Acquisition Design (RAD) is a type of single-case research design (SCRD) that involves repeated and rapid measurement of irreversible discrete skills or behaviors through pre-and postintervention probes across different sets of stimuli. Researchers interested in the study of learning in animals and humans have used the RAD because of its sensitivity to detect immediate changes in rate or accuracy. Despite its strengths, critics of the RAD have cautioned against its use due to reasonable threats to internal validity like pretest effects, history, and maturation. Furthermore, many methodologists and researchers have neglected the RAD in their SCRD standards (e.g., What Works Clearinghouse [WWC], 2020; Horner et al., 2005). Unless given guidance to address threats to internal validity, researchers may avoid the design altogether or continue to use a weak version of the RAD. Therefore, we propose a set of 15 quality RAD indicators, comprising foundational elements that should be present in all RAD studies and additional features that enhance causal inference and external validity. We review contemporary RAD use and describe how the additional features strengthen the rigor of RAD studies. We end the article with suggested guidelines for interpreting effects and the strength of the evidence generated by RAD studies. We invite researchers to use these initial guidelines as a jumping off point for a more RAD future.

Feasible and Effective Language Intervention Strategies that Accelerate Students' Academic Achievement.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who work in schools are responsible for delivering intervention that improves language abilities but has an impact on academic outcomes. To accomplish this, SLPs need feasible and effective strategies that can be readily incorporated into clinical practice. In this article, we describe two ways that SLPs can deliver intervention that can improve language abilities and academic outcomes: choosing academic language targets and providing language intervention contextualized in the academic curriculum.

Correction to: How to Be RAD: Repeated Acquisition Design Features that Enhance Internal and External Validity.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s40614-021-00301-2.].

Using Parallel, Narrative-Based Measures to Examine the Relationship Between Listening and Reading Comprehension: A Pilot Study.

Purpose The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether parallel measures of narrative-based listening comprehension and reading comprehension reflected the same construct and yielded comparable scores from a diverse sample of second- and third-grade students. One hundred ten students participated in this study. Method Three listening and three reading comprehension narrative retells and subsequent responses to story questions and vocabulary questions were collected using the Narrative Language Measures Listening and Reading subtests of the CUBED assessment. Results Results indicated a strong correlation between the listening comprehension and reading comprehension measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the listening and reading comprehension measures loaded onto one factor. Mean scores were not significantly different between the listening and reading comprehension measures, and the equipercentile analyses indicated that the two measures yielded scores that aligned with similar percentile rankings for a diverse sample of students, suggesting symmetry and equity. Conclusion Oral narrative language retells and responses to story and vocabulary questions could potentially serve as proxy measures for reading comprehension for young students.

Narrative Intervention: Principles to Practice.

Purpose Narrative interventions are a class of language interventions that involve the use of telling or retelling stories. Narrative intervention can be an efficient and versatile means of promoting a large array of academically and socially important language targets that improve children's access to general education curriculum and enhance their peer relations. The purpose of this tutorial is to supply foundational information about the importance of narratives and to offer recommendations about how to maximize the potential of narrative interventions in school-based clinical practice. Method Drawing from decades of cognitive and linguistic research, a tutorial on narratives and narrative language is presented first. Ten principles that support the design and implementation of narrative interventions are described. Results Clinicians can use narrative intervention to teach story grammar, complex language, vocabulary, inferencing, and social pragmatics. Storytelling, as an active intervention ingredient, promotes the comprehension and production of complex language. Conclusion When narrative intervention is implemented following a set of principles drawn from research and extensive clinical experience, speech-language pathologists can efficiently and effectively teach a broad set of academically and socially meaningful skills to diverse students.

The Classification Accuracy of a Dynamic Assessment of Inferential Word Learning for Bilingual English/Spanish-Speaking School-Age Children.

Purpose Educators often use results from static norm-referenced vocabulary assessments to aid in the diagnosis of school-age children with a language disorder. However, research has indicated that many of these vocabulary assessments yield inaccurate, biased results, especially with culturally and linguistically diverse children. This study examined whether the use of a dynamic assessment of inferential word learning was more accurate at identifying bilingual (English/Spanish-speaking) children with a language disorder when compared to static measures of vocabulary. Method Thirty-one bilingual Spanish/English school-age children-21 children with typical language and 10 children with a language disorder-ages 5;9-9;7 (years;months) were administered traditional static vocabulary assessments and a dynamic assessment of inferential word learning that used a test-teach-test design. Results Discriminant analysis and logistic regression indicated that the combined posttest scores and modifiability ratings from the dynamic assessment generated 90%-100% sensitivity and 90.5%-95.2% specificity, which were superior to the static vocabulary tests. Conclusion These preliminary findings suggest that dynamic assessment of inferential word learning may be an effective method for accurately identifying diverse children with a language disorder.

Predicting Reading Problems 6 Years Into the Future: Dynamic Assessment Reduces Bias and Increases Classification Accuracy.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how well a kindergarten dynamic assessment of decoding predicts future reading difficulty at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade and to determine whether the dynamic assessment improves the predictive validity of traditional static kindergarten reading measures. Method: With a small variation in sample size by grade, approximately 370 Caucasian and Hispanic students were administered a 3-min dynamic assessment of decoding and static measures of letter identification and phonemic awareness at the beginning of kindergarten. Oral reading fluency was then assessed at the end of Grades 2-5. In this prospective, longitudinal study, predictive validity was estimated for the Caucasian and Hispanic students by examining the amount of variance the static and dynamic assessments explained and by referring to area under the curve and sensitivity and specificity values. Results: The dynamic assessment accounted for variance in reading ability over and above the static measures, with fair to good area under the curve values and sensitivity and specificity. Classification accuracy worsened when the static measures were included as predictor measures. The results of this study indicate that a very brief dynamic assessment can predict with approximately 75%-80% accuracy, which kindergarten students will have difficulty in learning to decode up to 6 years into the future. Conclusions: Dynamic assessment of decoding is a promising approach to identifying future reading difficulty of young kindergarten students, mitigating the cultural and linguistic bias found in traditional static early reading measures.

Bridging Oral and Written Language: An Oral Narrative Language Intervention Study With Writing Outcomes.

Purpose: Despite literature showing a correlation between oral language and written language ability, there is little evidence documenting a causal connection between oral and written language skills. The current study examines the extent to which oral language instruction using narratives impacts students' writing skills. Method: Following multiple baseline design conventions to minimize threats to internal validity, 3 groups of 1st-grade students were exposed to staggered baseline, intervention, and maintenance conditions. During the intervention condition, groups received 6 sessions of small-group oral narrative instruction over 2 weeks. Separated in the school day from the instruction, students wrote their own stories, forming the dependent variable across baseline, intervention, and maintenance conditions. Written stories were analyzed for story structure and language complexity using a narrative scoring flow chart based on current academic standards. Results: Corresponding to the onset of oral narrative instruction, all but 1 student showed meaningful improvements in story writing. All 4 students, for whom improvements were observed and maintenance data were available, continued to produce written narratives above baseline levels once the instruction was withdrawn. Conclusions: Results suggest that narrative instruction delivered exclusively in an oral modality had a positive effect on students' writing. Implications include the efficiency and inclusiveness of oral language instruction to improve writing quality, especially for young students.

Dynamic Assessment of Narratives: Efficient, Accurate Identification of Language Impairment in Bilingual Students.

Purpose: This study investigated the classification accuracy of a concentrated English narrative dynamic assessment (DA) for identifying language impairment (LI). Method: Forty-two Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten to third-grade children (10 LI and 32 with no LI) were administered two 25-min DA test-teach-test sessions. Pre- and posttest narrative retells were scored in real time. Using a structured intervention approach, examiners taught children missing story grammar elements and subordination. A posttest was administered using a parallel story. Results: Four classification predictors were analyzed: posttest scores, gain scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration. Discriminant function analysis indicated that an overall modifiability rating was the best classifier, with 100% sensitivity and 88% specificity after 1 DA session and 100% sensitivity and specificity after 2 sessions. Any 2 combinations of posttest scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration for just 1 session resulted in sensitivity and specificity rates over 90%. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to identify clinically usable cutoff points. Post hoc exploration indicated that similar results could be obtained after only one 5-10-min teaching cycle, potentially further abbreviating the DA process. Conclusion: Concentrated English narrative DA results in high classification accuracy for bilingual children with and without LI. This efficient version of DA is amenable to clinical use.

Predicting Reading Difficulty in First Grade Using Dynamic Assessment of Decoding in Early Kindergarten: A Large-Scale Longitudinal Study.

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the classification accuracy of early static prereading measures and early dynamic assessment reading measures administered to 600 kindergarten students. At the beginning of kindergarten, all of the participants were administered two commonly used static prereading measures. The participants were then administered either a dynamic assessment featuring an onset-rime decoding strategy or a dynamic assessment featuring a sound-by-sound strategy. At the end of first grade, those same participants' reading ability was assessed using multiple reading measures. Results indicated that the dynamic assessments yielded significantly higher classification accuracy over the static measures, but that the classification accuracy of the two dynamic assessments did not differ significantly. Sensitivity for the static measures was less than 80%, and specificity ranged from 33% to 51%. The sensitivity and specificity for the dynamic assessments was greater than 80% for all children, with the exception of specificity for the Hispanic children, which was at or greater than 70%. Results also indicated that the combination of static and dynamic measures did not improve the classification accuracy over the dynamic assessments alone. Dynamic assessment appears to be a promising approach to classifying young children at risk for future reading difficulty.

Tier 2 Language Intervention for Diverse Preschoolers: An Early-Stage Randomized Control Group Study Following an Analysis of Response to Intervention.

PURPOSE: The first purpose of this study was to explore the use of a whole class, test-teach-test, dynamic assessment of narratives for identifying participants. The second purpose was to examine the efficacy of a Tier 2 narrative language intervention for culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers. METHOD: A dynamic assessment was conducted with students from 3 Head Start classrooms. On the basis of the results of the dynamic assessment, 22 children were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 12) and control (n = 10) groups for intervention. Participants received a small-group (4:1), differentiated, narrative intervention for 15-20 min, twice a week, for 9 weeks. Interventionists used weekly progress monitoring data to explicitly focus on individualized narrative and linguistic targets. RESULTS: The treatment group showed significant improvement over the control group on proximal and distal measures of narrative retells, with large effect sizes. Group differences on a measure of children's language in the context of personal stories were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: This early-stage study provides evidence that narrative language intervention is an effective approach to improving the language skills of preschoolers with diverse language needs. Furthermore, the evidence supports the use of dynamic assessment for reducing overidentification and identifying candidates for small-group language intervention.

Small groups, big gains: efficacy of a tier 2 phonological awareness intervention with preschoolers with early literacy deficits.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of a phonological awareness (PA) intervention, designed for Tier 2 instruction in a Response to Intervention (RTI) model, delivered to small groups of preschoolers. METHOD: A multiple-baseline design across participants was used to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention on low-income preschool children's PA skills. A trained interventionist delivered small group sessions 3 to 4 days a week and ensured children received frequent opportunities to respond and contingent feedback. Participants received 28 to 36 lessons that lasted about 10 min each and focused on PA and alphabet knowledge. Initiation of intervention was staggered across 3 triads, and 7 children completed the study. RESULTS: The intervention produced consistent gains on weekly progress monitoring assessments of the primary outcome measure for first sound identification (First Sound Fluency). Most children also demonstrated gains on other measures of PA and alphabet knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: Results provide support for the application of a small group intervention consistent with an RTI framework and document the potential benefits of the intervention to learners who need early literacy instruction beyond the core curriculum.

Systematic individualized narrative language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individualized, systematic language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism. METHOD: A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to examine the effect of the intervention on language features of personal narratives. Three 6- to 8-year-old boys with autism participated in 12 individual intervention sessions that targeted 2-3 story grammar elements (e.g., problem, plan) and 3-4 linguistic complexity elements (e.g., causal subordination, adverbs) selected from each participant's baseline performance. Intervention involved repeated retellings of customized model narratives and the generation of personal narratives with a systematic reduction of visual and verbal scaffolding. Independent personal narratives generated at the end of each baseline, intervention, and maintenance session were analyzed for presence and sophistication of targeted features. RESULTS: Graphical and statistical results showed immediate improvement in targeted language features as a function of intervention. There was mixed evidence of maintenance 2 and 7 weeks after intervention. CONCLUSION: Children with autism can benefit from an individualized, systematic intervention targeting specific narrative language features. Greater intensity of intervention may be needed to gain enduring effects for some language features.