THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT UNITS OF MEASUREMENT ON INSTRUCTIONAL DECISION-MAKING

This study used an adapted alternating treatments design to evaluate t he effectiveness of two different intertrial intervals (immediate and 5-seconds) for increasing the sight word vocabulary of four students w ho met the diagnostic criteria for Learning Disabled in Reading. A gro up of control words were assessed each day with no instruction occurri ng for those words. Results across the four subjects yielded no consis tent differences between the immediate and 5 sec. conditions for three of the four participants. However, when measuring learning as a funct ion of instructional time, immediate presentation resulted in a faster learning rate than the 5 sec. condition for three of the four partici pants. Discussion focuses on the relationship between measurement of l earning and instructional decision making.