We used a multiple-baseline design across materials to assess the effects of stimulus superimposition and background fading on the sight-word reading skills of a 6-year-old boy with autism. Before the study began, the boy was taught to make verbal responses when shown 15 photographs of physical education activities and equipment. During baseline…

The authors reviewed studies on teaching reading comprehension to students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) with a focus on text (academic reading) comprehension and sight word (functional) comprehension. Eleven of 754 studies met the inclusion criteria: participants with ASD, published in English in a peer-reviewed journal, and use of an…

Sight-word instruction can improve functioning with various daily, recreational, and work-related tasks among children with moderate to severe disabilities. Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of drill methods to teach sight words if the model contains at least 50% known items, which would also increase the number of opportunities…

A theoretical perspective on acquiring sight vocabulary and developing meaningful vocabulary is presented. Dual Coding Theory assumes that cognition occurs in two independent but connected codes: a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. The mixed research literature on using pictures in teaching sight vocabulary is…

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of activity-based intervention and didactic instruction to teach sight word reading to four young children with developmental delays attending an inclusive child care centre. Following the collection of baseline measures, the two interventions, counterbalanced for word lists…

The author offers 16 sight word "tricks" that children can use to remember the spelling of 25 common sight words. Materials and techniques for teaching sight words are also suggested. (SBH)

Differential effects of three training procedures to teach sight words to 13 children with moderate to mild mental retardation were investigated in an alternating treatments design. Number of correct responses was assessed during probe sessions in word-alone (word was presented without picture), integrated-picture (word was presented with…

Contains definitions, approaches, and guidelines for using sight vocabulary. (Author/RB)

This study compared the copy, cover, and compare method to a picture-word matching method for teaching sight word recognition. Participants were 5 kindergarten students with less than preprimer sight word vocabularies who were enrolled in a public school in the Pacific Northwest. A multielement design was used to evaluate the effects of the two…

The effectiveness of two teaching procedures--antecedent and contingent modeling--in teaching basic sight vocabulary to learning disabled children was tested with two primary-school-age boys with severe reading disabilities. (Author/DLS)

The study involving four trainable mentally retarded elementary school students investigated the effects on sight word recognition of a teaching approach employing a small number of stimulus items at a given time, high repetition rates, and high density reinforcement. A second approach used a picture-word association technique. (SB)

Argues that proponents of the sight method must reevaluate some of their advice to teachers in light of recent research. (RB)

The study involving 32 learning disabled elementary school students evaluated the effect of applying a mastery learning model to sight word instruction. Ss were taught 30 sight words in nine lessons over a period of 3 weeks. Lessons incorporated the following remedial principles: limiting the size of the teaching unit, giving discrimination…