JCPSLP Vol 22 No 2 2020

Current study The current study aimed to describe SBR interactions in two families, each with two primary school aged children with ASD (who had been receiving formal reading instruction at school), to explore how mothers interact with their children during SBR. The key research question posed in this study was: do parents interact differently during SBR interactions with each of their children who have ASD? Method The University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee approved the study. Participants The participants were two mothers and the two children of each of them. The two families had previously been part of a larger study (for details see Arciuli et al., 2013). The inclusion criteria for the larger study were broad: the child (a) had been diagnosed with ASD, (b) was verbal, and (c) was learning to read. For the current study, the two parents (both mothers) and their children were selected due to the multiple incidence of ASD within the family. All were assigned pseudonyms to protect their identities. One of the mothers, Cheryl (age 42 at time of testing), had two children, Nicola and Andrew. The other mother, Anne (age 45 at time of testing), also had two children, James and Tom. Details of the child participants can be found in Table 1. Both mothers indicated that they were of Caucasian background, their combined household income was in the high range, and both had a secondary school education. Cheryl indicated that she was engaged in domestic duties, and Anne was working part-time. Both families spoke only English at home. Materials and procedures SBR sessions Families were given the option to participate in the SBR sessions either at their home or a university clinic. All reading sessions took place in a quiet room. A camera was set up on a tripod to video-record the interactions and the researcher was out of view. Mothers and their children were invited to read as they normally would at home. Each session involved the parent–child dyad engaging in five

minutes of reading a familiar book selected from their own collection. This was followed by five minutes reading an unfamiliar book, supplied by the researcher. Both interactions were timed from when discussion of the book commenced. All videos included were at least five minutes in duration. Books used for this study were Fox in Socks (Seuss, 1966), chosen by Nicola and Andrew, and Put Me in the Zoo (Lopshire, 1960), chosen by James and Tom. Text readability metrics for these fiction books indicated that they were suitable for children aged 7–8 and 5–6, respectively (Simpson, 2009–2016). Standardised tests of children’s reading ability Prior to the SBR sessions, each child’s reading ability was assessed using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA-3; Neale, 1999), the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007). Results are reported in Table 1. Data analysis Each SBR session was transcribed verbatim and mother’s extra textual utterances (utterances that were not directly reading the text) were coded according to type. The coding system was based on that used by Arciuli et al. (2013) which categorised utterances as praise, error correction or book-related (see Table 2 for examples). A second rater conducted transcription on 15% of each mother’s utterances and reliability was carried out using the formula agreement/ (agreement + disagreement) x 100. Interrater agreement was 80% for transcription measured in words and coding of utterances, which is considered a good level of agreement (McHugh, 2012). Results Within the dyadic interactions, a range of utterance types were used. The breakdown of utterance types is summarised in Table 3. Cheryl In both dyadic interactions, Cheryl’s children read aloud to her. During the reading interaction with Cheryl’s older child, Nicola, there were 31 utterances in total. Cheryl provided praise on 6.5% of occasions, error correction on 25.8% of occasions, and book-related utterances on 67.7% of

Table 1: Child characteristics a and children’s standardised reading scores (NARA-3) b

PPVT-4 (Performance descriptor)

NARA-3 b Comprehension (Performance descriptor)

WRAT-4 (Performance descriptor)

Child

Age Diagnosis Comorbidities Schooling

NARA-3 b Accuracy (Performance descriptor)

Nicola

8;0

ASD

APD, SLI

SCMS

2 (Very low)

1 (Very low)

3 (Low)

1 (Extremely low)

Andrew 6;2

ASD

None reported MS

9 (Very low)

0 (Very low)

53 (Average)

21 (Average)

James

11;8

ASD

Phonology problems

MS

4 (Very low)

19 (Below average)

10 (Below average)

37 (Average)

MS

34 (Average)

30 (Average)

61 (Average)

23 (Average)

Tom 7;3

AS

Apraxia, stuttering (Resolved), SD

a APD = auditory processing disorder; SLI = specific language impairment; AS = Asperger’s syndrome; SD = sleep disorder; MS = mainstream school; SCMS = specialist class in mainstream school. b Participant’s scores expressed here as a percentile rank.

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JCPSLP Volume 22, Number 2 2020

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