Effects of a Teacher Versus iPad-Facilitated Intervention on the Vocabulary of At-Risk Preschool Children

This study examined the effects of an adapted alternating treatments design (AATD) consisting of teacher-facilitated and iPad-facilitated instruction on at-risk preschool children's vocabulary. Instruction was provided on 42 verbs, divided equally between treatments, across five participants over the course of 7 weeks. Dependent variables included expressive (i.e., providing a definition) and receptive (i.e., identifying the target verb from a picture menu, and yes/no questions including correct and incorrect definitions of the verb) probes of instructional targets. All five participants demonstrated increases from pretest to posttest in their expressive and receptive understanding of the verbs. Implications for research and practice are provided.