Off the top of my head, I would recommend Chapter 16, TEACHING READING, in the second volume of the American Psychological Association Handbook for ABA (Daly & Kupzyk, 2012). This chapter provides a great overview of a behavior analytic approach to reading. There are many references within the chapter that will provide a useful foundation for further searching specific to implementation with individuals with autism.

Lastly, you might benefit from searching more specific terms other than ABA. I would recommend you search within the Direct Instruction and Precision Teaching literature.

I hope this helps as a starting point since it doesn't really give you specifics to application of autism.

By happenstance I was reading this article and realized it fits your request.

Ragnarsdottir, G. A. (2007). Teaching an Icelandic student with autism to read by

combining direct instruction and precision teaching. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 8, 289-304.

Thanks!

There's a lot to teaching reading. Shawn Quigley's notes about Daly and Kupzyk (2012), DI, and PT are very valuable. There is also an online-first paper in JADD by Farah El Zein, Michael Solis, Sharon Vaughn, Lisa McCulley that's available here https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Farah_Zein/publications/?pubType=article

Our school district, in the state of New Jersey, uses SRA Program for the children with Autism (mild to moderate) and modified for the more severe. A teacher can start with Language for Learning in the SRA program. It is scripted, predictable, and systematic. Students meet skills before moving on and each skill builds into the next skill. We have seen success in our district. We also use Read 180 for the higher functioning students with Autism. Hope that helps.

Suzann

Headsprout Early Reading is a web-based reading program that uses ABA to teach reading skills - and several research teams (including my own at MSU) have started examining how it might be administered to children with ASD. Grindle and colleagues (2013) recently published an article in Behavioral Interventions on the use of Headsprout Early Reading with children with ASD. Whitcomb, Bass, & Luiselli (2011) also published a study on the use of Headsprout Early Reading in Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities. We are wrapping up our first year of research and should have some outcomes to disseminate soon.

Josh, I am looking forward to reading the results of your work. Thanks.

Suzann, Thanks, I think Read 180 is a good program but the kids have to be able to read - decode, have some vocabulary, comprehension, etc. I am thinking more about teaching kids with ASD to learn the basics - letters, letters and sounds, phonemic awareness and so on with DTT or some other similar method.

John, There certainly is a lot to teaching reading. The National Reading Panel identified the skills kids need to be successful readers and I wonder if any of those skills are being taught using ABA. Thanks for the article link.

Hi Susan,

Read 180 - definitely - is that a great program....but you have to have a foundation of reading. Hmmmm...thinking basic SRA? Foundations? perhaps. To teach reading - I use to use Project Read program - way back with my first graders. Have you heard of Project Read?

Good Luck on your search.

Suzann

Suzann, I have used a variety of "curriculum in a box" kits and, for most SPED kids, it works well. There are some who struggle with the very basics - letter identification, letter-sound matching, etc. I keep thinking for these kids discrete trial training, along with training their parents to run trials at home, may be the answer.

Thanks for your comments.

Susan

You might want to check Dr. R. Douglas Greer books, part of the CABAS programming. You may also want to look at Fluency based reading instruction through Morningside Academy.

Thanks, Carol.

If you're teaching anything, you're using ABA. ABA is not just an autism treatment. ABA uses principles of reinforcement, environmental arrangement, cues/prompts, corrective feedback, and etcetera. If you are using a phonics-based approach to teach reading, you are "using ABA." Perhaps searches in teaching decoding skills, reading fluency, and comprehension for learners with intellectual disabilities, autism, or other developmental disabilities will be helpful. Diane Browder's work (out of UNC Charlotte) might be a good starting point.

The basic approaches in treatment of autistic development (disorders) are: to arrive the adequate level of motoric development (chronologically) and the body perception (body image). After that we can start to stimulate the differentiated motoric forms (models) and than simultan the motoric models of speech expression. After all all of tehm we cant start with education of reading and writing.

Book Psihomotorni razvoj deteta

Article The VILAN Method: New approach in treatment of motor disturb...

I agree, the Headsprout program (on line by subscription) is terrific for teaching phonics in a fun way, very motivating as reinforcement is provided as well as corrections for incorrect responses. The Edmark Reading Program Level 1 is also terrific, and is available either in print format (about $500 for the kit) or software (about $220) for the CD. Edmark is a sight-word based reading program with comprehension-infused instruction. SRA Reading Mastery is another good alternate, and combines decoding instruction, spelling, and comprehension.

The paradigm of stimulus equivalence was proposed by Sidman and Talby (1982) and has wide applicability for teaching reading for learners with intellectual disabilities, autism, or other developmental disabilities. 

This paradigm is a behavior analytic approach to reading.

Check those references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1333115/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5550631

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8469796

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9532749

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16795844

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22477340

Veronica Bender Haydu, thanks for this excellent set of references.

Hello,

I have been using ABA, precision teaching and direct instruction to teach reading to children with autism.

Jen

Giovambattista Presti

I am. Please feel free to contact me if I can be helpful.

I'm a bit confused as using ABA to teach reading doesn't make much sense to me at all. Reading falls into the realm of language & communication, which is the purview of speech-language pathology (SLP), therefore teaching reading to kids with ASD should be done through an SLP lens instead of a behaviorist one.