The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative effects of a commenting intervention and a commenting plus trials intervention for teaching preschool children letter naming during play activities. For each intervention, descriptive comments were systematically delivered to expose children repeatedly to targeted letter names in a salient context. The commenting plus trials intervention included the use of a constant time delay instructional procedure to deliver prompted trials. An adapted alternating treatments single-subject experimental design was used to compare the effects and efficiency of each intervention on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of childrens letter naming. In addition, three measures were used to compare the relative efficiency of the interventions. The findings varied across children. Two children acquired, maintained, and generalized letter naming skills under both interventions. For the other two children, only one intervention was effective, and a different intervention was effective for each child. When the interventions were compared in terms of efficiency, differences were minimal. Across participants, the descriptive commenting intervention required slightly fewer sessions but more letter exposures to reach criterion than the descriptive commenting plus trials intervention. Total time to reach criterion, however, was equivalent across the two interventions. Generalization and maintenance data were similar across the two interventions. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-10212010-030039 |
| Date | 21 October 2010 |
| Creators | Kinder, Kiersten Ann |
| Contributors | Dr. Mary Louise Hemmeter, Dr. Ann Kaiser, Dr. Mark Wolery, Dr. Patricia Snyder |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-10212010-030039/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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