Effects of Systematic Instruction on Listening Comprehension of Science e-Texts for Students with Moderate Intellectual Disability

A multiple probe across participants design was used to examine the effects of systematic instruction (constant time delay and a system of least prompts) on both generating and answering questions about science e-texts for students with moderate intellectual disability. Three elementary aged students with moderate intellectual disability participated in this study. Two special education teachers served as the primary interventionists. The students were pretrained using constant time delay and visual and auditory cues delivered on an iPad2^TM to access and navigate e-texts on the Internet. The primary dependent variable was the number of comprehension questions correctly answered after students generated a question and listened to a science e-text. Additional questions examined (a) the students' ability to generate questions both with and without the support of an iPad2^TM template, (b) the generalizability of generating questions and answering questions about science e-texts in a general education science setting, and (c) stakeholder perceptions. A functional relationship was demonstrated for both generating questions using an iPad2^TM and answering comprehension questions. All three students demonstrated an ability to correctly answer questions by either saying an answer from memory or independently searching the e-text and replaying target text to find the correct answer. A functional relationship also was demonstrated between constant time delay instruction and the points earned accurately generating questions using an iPad2^TM.