Effects of Incremental Rehearsal on Sight Word and Letter Acquisition among Students with Autism and Cognitive Impairment

Incremental rehearsal (IR) is a flashcard intervention that involves the interspersal of previously mastered targets and immediate error correction. Previous research indicates IR is an effective intervention for teaching discrete skills. Much of existing research, however, was conducted with typically developing students. The current study aimed to extend the literature by being the first to implement IR with students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and an intellectual disability receiving instruction in a self-contained special-education setting. A multiple probe design across sets of stimuli was used to evaluate the effectiveness of IR on sight word and letter acquisition among three early elementary students with autism and cognitive impairment. Results indicated that IR was effective for all participants. Further, the results provided evidence that IR can be used with known stimuli from a stimulus class other than the stimulus class from which unknown stimuli are being drawn. Future research should compare IR to other flashcard interventions regularly employed with this student population. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The present study suggests that IR is an effective intervention for teaching sight words to students with developmental disabilities.