Teaching Storytelling and Story Recall to Children with Autism Using Textual Prompts

Background:  

Recalling a story is an advanced skill that many typically developing children may be called upon to do (e.g., “tell me the story about the three little pigs” or “paraphrase the book you read last week”).  Children with autism may struggle with the acquisition of verbal behavior of this complexity and thus may require specific teaching techniques.  Studies have shown textual prompts (Finkel & Williams, 2001) and picture prompts (Goldsmith, LeBlanc, & Sautter, 2007) to be effective in teaching vocal verbal behavior to individuals with autism.  Furthermore, although descriptive studies (Loveland, McEvoy, & Tunali, 1990; Norbury & Bishop, 2002; Diehl, Bennetto, & Young, 2006) on storytelling behavior and reading comprehension in children with autism exist, the impact of a verbal behavior approach on these skills has yet to be examined.

Objectives:  

The current study aimed to determine the effectiveness of text prompts and backward chaining on storytelling behavior, and to assess generalization of behavior change to the recall of novel stories that were read but not targeted for treatment.  The current study also aimed to determine the impact of such procedures on reading comprehension.

Methods:  

Participants included two children: Josh, a 7-year-old male and Joel, a 4-year-old male, both diagnosed with autism.  Five short stories were targeted for acquisition with each participant in a multiple baseline design across stories.  Stories for Josh were ten pages in length, with six words per page; stories for Joel were five pages long, with five words per page.  Differences in story length and complexity between participants were based on differences in age as well as in reading and language skills at pre-assessment, and the stories were created for this study to control for prior history.  Story pages were targeted in succession through backwards chaining (Miltenberger, 2000).  Treatment sessions consisted of an initial probe, followed by a prompted trial in the presence of the text, followed by an independent opportunity to respond with the targeted story page(s) when they were covered by a blank page.  Baseline probes were conducted in an ongoing fashion to monitor generalized improvements in recall of nontargeted stories. Pre- and post-assessments consisting of basic reading comprehension questions were also conducted with Joel.

Results:  

Results demonstrated an increase in storytelling behavior under treatment conditions and a generalized increase in recall of stories read but not specifically targeted in treatment with both participants.  Results also indicated an increase in correct responses to reading comprehension questions following implementation of treatment with the one participant for whom comprehension was assessed.

Conclusions:  

These findings indicate that recall of stories can be taught to children with autism using textual prompts and reinforcement contingencies based on backwards chaining procedures.  Results of this study also suggest future directions for teaching reading skills and other complex verbal vocal behavior to children with autism.