Video Visual Scene Displays with Dynamic Text: Effect on Single-Word Reading by an Adolescent with Cerebral Palsy

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the Transition to Literacy (T2L) feature within video visual scene displays (VSDs) on the single-word reading of academic vocabulary concepts (i.e., weather concepts) by a pre-literate adolescent with cerebral palsy and minimal speech.

A single-subject, multiple probe, across word sets design was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention. The intervention used an AAC app programmed with video VSDs embedded with hotspots with the T2L feature to teach the adolescent 12 academic vocabulary words.

The adolescent acquired all target words successfully with only minimal exposure to the written words through the app and was able to generalize her learning to two novel tasks. Using Tau-U to evaluate the size of the observed effects, there were very large effects across all word sets.

The findings from this study demonstrate the effectiveness of the T2L feature to improve single-word reading in pre-literate individuals with minimal speech. The use of video VSDs and T2L technology together may offer professionals a unique way to complement current AAC devices and literacy instruction for adolescents with minimal speech who are pre-literate.