Increased Complexity in Bidirectional Naming Stimulus Control Enhances Reading in First Graders

In 2 experiments, I studied the effects of the establishment of Incidental Bidirectional Naming (Inc. BiN) for unfamiliar stimuli on reading comprehension for first-grade students. In Experiment 1, I measured the associations, differences, and predictive value between multiple measures of reading comprehension and Inc. BiN stimulus control in 22 first-grade students. Inc. BiN stimulus control was measured with familiar and unfamiliar stimuli and partitioned into groups according to degrees of Unidirectional Naming (UniN) and Inc. BiN. Measures of reading comprehension included the i-Ready® K-12 Adaptive Reading Diagnostic and Woodcock-Johnson® Tests of Achievement (WJIV®). Results indicated significant correlations between degrees of UniN for unfamiliar stimuli and reading comprehension. In Experiment 2, I studied the effects of the establishment of Inc. BiN for unfamiliar stimuli on multiple measures of reading comprehension in a single case, multiple probe design across dyads. I selected 3 dyads of first graders who textually responded at or above grade-level and demonstrated the absence of Inc. BiN stimulus control for unfamiliar stimuli. There were 3 reading comprehension measures: (1) explicit reading comprehension probe after reading a fiction and nonfiction passage, (2) read-do probe consisting of unfamiliar stimuli, and (3) WJIV® subtests. Participants acquired Inc. BiN stimulus control for unfamiliar stimuli through a Multiple Exemplar Instruction (MEI) intervention across listener and speaker responses. After participants demonstrated Inc. BiN stimulus control by emitting at least 80% accuracy across listener and speaker response topographies across two consecutive novel stimuli sets, I assessed reading comprehension performance. Results from experimenter-derived passage comprehension probes demonstrated increases across all 6 participants. Although read-do results were inconsistent, 5 participants demonstrated increases following the acquisition of Inc. BiN stimulus control. WJIV® results demonstrated the greatest increases in Passage Comprehension performance, while marginal and educationally significant increases were still observed across Reading Vocabulary and Reading Recall subtests.