Jonna Bobzien

Using Dyad-Specific Social Stories to Increase Communicative and Social Skills of Preschoolers with Hearing Loss in Self-Contained and Inclusive Settings.

Children with profound hearing loss often do not have the same prelinguistic opportunities for social and communication interaction as peers with typical hearing and benefit from structured opportunities to learn these skills. This study examined the effect of two interventions to improve the communicative and social skills of four preschoolers with hearing loss in two learning environments: a preschool for children who are deaf (oral approach) and an inclusive regular preschool. A social story with a verbal prompt was provided before play (Intervention 1), and a social story with a teacher prompt and verbal prompting and reinforcement during play were provided (Intervention 2). A single-subject design revealed that in the inclusive settings, three of the four participants increased verbal comments and play turns in Interventions 1 and 2, although some changes were slight. In the oral preschool classroom, two showed improvements in target behaviours with both interventions. Generalisation of skills occurred in two participants. Additionally, all participants generalised some vocabulary from their social story to play. Implications for teaching young children with hearing loss who are oral in inclusive classrooms are discussed.

Teaching Emotion Words Using Social Stories and Created Experiences in Group Instruction with Preschoolers who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing: An Exploratory Study

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate whether specific emotion vocabulary could be taught to children with hearing impairments using child-specific social stories and demonstration tasks. The participants were three preschool-aged children who were being served in an auditory-verbal preschool classroom. An A-B single-subject design was used during a small group activity for 10 weeks that took place on average three times a week. During the study, participants were provided small group instruction using social stories and demonstration tasks to teach three target emotion words (afraid, surprised, and frustrated). Results indicated that all children successfully used the target vocabulary without adult prompting to describe target emotions in themselves and in others. The implications for classroom instruction are discussed.

Using Repeated Reading and Explicit Instruction to Teach Vocabulary to Preschoolers with Hearing Loss.

Children with hearing loss often experience communication and language delays that result in difficulties acquiring novel vocabulary and literacy skills. This research examined the effectiveness of using repeated storybook reading paired with explicit teacher instruction to teach novel vocabulary to young children with hearing loss who were receiving instruction with an oral approach. Data from a multiple baseline design across 4 children demonstrated that all children acquired the instructional vocabulary words, demonstrated generalization of the words in a novel situation, and maintained vocabulary for 2–4 weeks following intervention. Vocabulary that had not been explicitly taught was learned at a low rate across the 5 books. Implications for teaching young children with hearing loss and communication delays are discussed.

Structured Instruction With Modified Storybooks to Teach Morphosyntax and Vocabulary to Preschoolers Who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing

Children who are deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) are at risk for diminished morphosyntactical and vocabulary development. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of repeated reading combined with structured instruction. Targets were a morphosyntactical form and novel vocabulary words. Participants were 3 preschoolers who are D/HH who were receiving instruction with an oral approach. Data from a multiple baseline design indicated that all children acquired the targeted skills and demonstrated high levels of generalization of these skills to untrained context. Implications for teaching young children who are D/HH using repeated storybook reading are discussed.

Teachers and Peers as Communication Models to Teach Grammatical Forms to Preschoolers With Hearing Loss

Structured input from both teachers and peers maximizes the opportunities for preschoolers to learn grammatical forms. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using a teacher and a peer with typical hearing and language skills to model grammatically correct verbal responses to action wh- questions (“What is he/she doing?”) using picture stimuli with three preschool-aged children with hearing loss. Data from a multiple probe across participants design indicated that (a) all children learned to appropriately answer the wh- question using their targeted grammatical form during intervention, (b) all three children were able to generalize these skills to untrained pictures with varying degrees of success, and (c) all three children maintained the skills for 6 to 10 weeks following intervention. Implications for teaching grammatical forms to preschool children with hearing loss are discussed.

Academic or Functional Life Skills? Using Behaviors Associated with Happiness to Guide Instruction for Students with Profound/Multiple Disabilities

The field of special education has begun to concentrate its efforts on developing objectives and procedural strategies that promote a positive quality of life for students with profound multiple disabilities, while determining which educational strategies are the most appropriate. A multielement design was used to compare the effects of two educational conditions, academic skills instruction and functional life skills instruction, on the quality of life indicators of four students with profound multiple disabilities. Results indicated that all four students demonstrated a greater number of behaviors associated with happiness while receiving academic skills instruction. Implications for current educational practices are addressed and directions for future research are discussed.

Using a Child-Specific Social Story to Improve Communication and Social Skills in Two Preschoolers with Cochlear Implants: An Exploratory Classroom Case Study

Abstract This case study explored the efficacy of reading the same child-specific social story prior to a five-minute unstructured play session with two four-year-old children with cochlear implants. Results revealed that after the social story was read one participant produced a moderate–high increase in initiated verbal comments while the other child manifested a slight increase, both used vocabulary from the story in their play, and that play turns increased. This strategy may offer promise for educators in separate and inclusive classrooms, although more research is needed.

A Feasibility Study of Autism Behavioral Markers in Spontaneous Facial, Visual, and Hand Movement Response Data

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disability with atypical traits in behavioral and physiological responses. These atypical traits in individuals with ASD may be too subtle and subjective to measure visually using tedious methods of scoring. Alternatively, the use of intrusive sensors in the measurement of psychophysical responses in individuals with ASD may likely cause inhibition and bias. This paper proposes a novel experimental protocol for non-intrusive sensing and analysis of facial expression, visual scanning, and eye-hand coordination to investigate behavioral markers for ASD. An institutional review board approved pilot study is conducted to collect the response data from two groups of subjects (ASD and control) while they engage in the tasks of visualization, recognition, and manipulation. For the first time in the ASD literature, the facial action coding system is used to classify spontaneous facial responses. Statistical analyses reveal significantly (p <0.01) higher prevalence of smile expression for the group with ASD with the eye-gaze significantly averted (p<0.05) from viewing the face in the visual stimuli. This uncontrolled manifestation of smile without proper visual engagement suggests impairment in reciprocal social communication, e.g., social smile. The group with ASD also reveals poor correlation in eye-gaze and hand movement data suggesting deficits in motor coordination while performing a dynamic manipulation task. The simultaneous sensing and analysis of multimodal response data may provide useful quantitative insights into ASD to facilitate early detection of symptoms for effective intervention planning.

Counseling Children and Adolescents with Sensory Processing Disorder: Results of an Exploratory National Study

Sensory processing disorder (SPD) is a neurological disorder impacting the behavioral, emotional, and social functioning of 5% to 17% of children. However, SPD is underrepresented in the counseling literature with few relevant peer-reviewed articles and no empirical research to date. In this article, authors present a brief overview of SPD and a description of and results regarding a national, exploratory, qualitative study of self-identified professional counselors’ (N = 204) preparation for, knowledge of, and experiences with child and adolescent clients with SPD.

A Puzzle-Based Tool to Study Individualized Perception Reactions for Children with Autism

Several studies on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show that there exists significant heterogeneity in phenotype of the disorder. Additionally, many published findings also suggested that ASD is defined by atypical local/global processing. In this paper, we designed a puzzled-based intervention to examine the sensitiveness to the information of local /global processing on individuals with ASD. Additionally, we surveyed the participants and their parents regarding their perceptions and feelings while completing the puzzles. The results verify that the proposed method can evaluate the degree of perception of local/global information by those on the spectrum. As a result, the design of puzzle-based visual stimuli with local/global information involved may become one of the crucial phenotypes to define ASD and can be further applied to facilitate a sub grouping for people with ASD.