A COMPARISON OF 3 INTERVENTIONS FOR INCREASING ORAL READING PERFORMANCE - APPLICATION OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL HIERARCHY

The instructional hierarchy is a behavior-analytic model that links le vel of academic skill development (i.e., acquisition, fluency, general ization, adaptation) with appropriate instructional techniques. The pr esent study used the instructional hierarchy to compare the effects of three instructional interventions (listening passage preview, subject passage preview, and taped words) on subjects' oral reading performan ce on word lists and passages. Subjects were 4 male students with lear ning disabilities who ranged in age from 8 years 10 months to 11 years 11 months. A multielement design was used to compare the effects of t he three interventions to each other and to baseline. Results indicate d that the listening passage preview intervention (which contained mod eling, drill, and generalization components) produced the largest perf ormance gains. The implications of these results for selecting academi c interventions based on the instructional hierarchy are discussed.