In December 2016, OAR’s Board of Directors authorized funding for six new applied autism research studies in 2017. These new grants, totaling $178,866, bring OAR’s total research funding to over $3.6 million since 2002. This is the third of six previews to be featured in “The OARacle” this year.
Learning disabilities affect as many as 70 percent of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the general population of children and in children with ASD, reading disability is far and away the most common form of learning disability. Because it is common, parents of children with ASD often face long waiting lists at specialty clinics, reflecting the fact that demand is greater than the supply of trained providers. There is a pressing need for access to affordable interventions that are less dependent on specialty clinics.
That is where OAR-funded researcher Bethany Hansen, Ph.D., BCBA-D, a licensed psychologist and the program director of the Language and Learning Clinic at the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta, Ga., comes in. She is conducting a feasibility study of the Headsprout Reading Program in children with ASD and reading delay to serve as a foundation for a larger, future randomized clinical trial.
Headsprout is a commercially available, computer-based reading intervention that includes components of applied behavior analysis (ABA). Several studies have shown it to be effective in improving the reading skills of children with reading delays in the general population.
The program begins by establishing the skills in each child’s repertoire and gradually increases the complexity to build skills across the five essential reading components identified by the National Reading Panel as necessary to become a proficient reader. These evidenced-based components include:
Headsprout has not been rigorously studied for use with children with ASD. If Headsprout is shown to be effective for this population, it provides an empirically supported intervention for teaching reading skills. Because the computer-based model also increases access to ABA-based intervention, clinicians, educators, and caregivers without specialized ABA training can use it, creating a potential solution to limited access to trained providers.
This pilot study will evaluate Headsprout’s feasibility and preliminary efficacy in a sample of 18 children ages 7 to 10 with ASD and reading delays. Half of the children will be randomly assigned to Headsprout and half to the waitlist for 12 weeks.
Subjects in the Headsprout group will receive three treatment sessions per week and will complete two lessons per session, for a total of up to 70 lessons. Headsprout will be offered to subjects in the waitlist control group following their participation.
Therapists participating in the study will be trained and observed by an experienced therapist.
The program begins by establishing the skills in each child’s repertoire and gradually increases the complexity to build skills across the five components. When the child has shown that he or she has mastered the skill, he or she moves on to the next lesson. Guided practice introduces a time criterion to build fluency skills. The therapist revisits mastered targets to promote maintenance of acquired skills.
One of Headsprout’s strengths is that it can be tailored to meet each child’s needs. Based on the child’s response, the program can offer additional practice, more instruction, or reinforcement. This individualized and stepwise approach is highly consistent with ABA principles.
The computerized format may also be especially appropriate for teaching children with ASD since studies have shown that computers are powerful tools for facilitating the learning of children with ASD. Headsprout teaches essential reading skills through multiple interactions with engaging, cartoon-based episodes set in the entertaining environs of “Space World,” “Dinosaur World,” “Undersea World,” and “Jungle World.”
A commonly used standardized reading ability assessment, the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, will be used to measure change from baseline to the end of the 12-week program. Dr. Hansen and her colleagues will calculate the proportion of children who achieve at least one grade level in reading skills on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy.
If Headsprout is demonstrated to be effective for children with ASD, its self-managed, computer-based format will provide a cost-effective, widely accessible, conveniently delivered treatment package that will greatly benefit children with ASD, their families, and their educators.
Because it is computer-based, it can be used in clinics, schools, and homes. It can also be administered to a group of children, so teachers can use it in their classrooms. In addition, Headsprout automatically collects data for each lesson, making it efficient for a teacher to easily track the progress of all children.
These benefits will allow larger numbers of children to access the program without requiring a trained therapist. Access to a program like Headsprout could resolve the issue that many families of a child with ASD and reading delays face in getting help when needed.
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