Vol. 77, No. I, pp. 107-124.©2010 Council for Exceptional Children.

Exceptional Children

Planning Instruction andSelf-Regulation Training:Effects on Writers WithAutism Spectrum DisordersKRISTIE ASARO-SAODLER

BRUCE SADDLERUniversity at Albany

ABSTRACT:r; This single-subject study examined the effects of a planning and self-regulation strategyon the story writing ability of young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Three child-ren with ASD in second and fourth grades were taught a strategy for planning and drafiing a storyusing the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD; Harris & Graham, 1996) approach. Afierthe intervention, all students improved their story writing ability in terms of length, number ofstory elements, and holistic quality. Evidence of strategy use was also noted in stories written for anoninstructed personal narrative genre. Results suggest that the SRSD approach may be beneficialin improving the writing skills of second- and fourth-grade students with ASD.

riting is becoming anincreasingly importantelement across curricu-lar areas. However,many children struggle

with this key literacy skill. In fact, according tothe most recent National Assessment of Educa-tional Progress (Greenwald, Persky, Campbell, &Mazzeo, 2002), the writing performance of 14%of students in Grade 4 falls below a "basic" levelof writing achievement. That percentage escalatesto 44% for students with an identified disability.

One way to imptove educational outcomesfor children with disabilities is to provide exem-plary writing instruction beginning early in theprimary grades before difficulties become morepervasive. Early interventions may maximize the

writing development of all children in general,minimize the number of students who developwriting problems as a result of poor instruction,reduce the effects of writing difficulties experi-enced by children with writing disabilities, andproduce more powerful benefits than later reme-diation efforts (Harris, Mason, Graham, & Sad-dler, 2002). Early intervention in writing is moreeffective than waiting until latet grades to addressdifficulties (Harris, Graham, & Mason, 2006).

Although early instructional interventions inwriting have proven effectual for students withwriting disabilities in general (c.f Danoff, Harris,& Graham, 1993; Saddler, Moran, Graham, &Harris, 2004), there has been little research con-ducted in this area with writers with more severedisabilities and, in particular, children with

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autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This is surpris-ing as an increasing number of children are beingdiagnosed with ASD (Myles & Simpson, 2001)with the Autism Society of America reportingapproximately 1 in 150 children receiving anASD diagnosis (Autism Society of America, 2008)and given that writing is an area that is often chal-lenging for these children (Criffin, Griffin, Fitch,Albera, & Gingras, 2006).

C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S O FW R I T E R S W I T H A S D

Children with ASD exhibit a wide variet)' of char-acteristics that may inhibit their ability to writeeffectively. For example, they may havemotor/coordination issues (Falk-Ross, Iverson, &Gilbert, 2004), which could impact their hand-writing. In addition, literal thinking, lack of ab-stract ideation, and difficulty imagining possiblefuture events and scenarios (Myles, 2005; Myles& Simpson, 2001; Winter, 2003) could under-mine their abilit)' to plan and write an imaginarystory for an absent audience. Students with ASDmay also lack the ability to elaborate tbeirthoughts and write in depth (Myles et al., 2003),and may be less likely to provide causal explana-tions and insight into internal mental states (Losh& Capps, 2003), which could make for short,nondescriptive writings. They may further lackorganizational skills (Moore, 2002), which maymake the act of systematizing and transferringtheir thoughts to paper difficult, leading to storiesthat are hard to understand.

Children with ASD exhibit a widevariety of characteristics that may inhibit

their ability to write effectively

In addition to these characteristics, deficits inself-regulation may impact writing abilities forchildren with ASD (Myles, 2005). Self-regulationis a central element of writing that skilled writersuse to navigate the complexities of tbe writingprocess (Graham & Harris, 1993; Hayes &Flower, 1986). The abilit)' to self-regulate in writ-ing involves monitoring, assessing, and reinforc-ing writing behaviors without depending on

prompts from adults or other skilled writers (Har-ris & Graham, 1996).

Unfortunately, children with ASD exhibitpoor self-regulatory abilities. These children typi-cally exhibit distractibility and decreased atten-tion towards a task to a greater degree than a childwith a learning disability (Bieberich & Morgan,2004). They may further lack self-managementskills (Koegel, Koegel, oi Carter, 1999) and mayfail to use self-directed speech to regulate their be-haviors (Joseph, McGrath, & Tager-Flusberg,2005). Although several researchers have used var-ious methods to assess the self-regulation abilitiesof children and adults with ASD (c.f Bieberich &Morgan, 2004; Joseph et al., 2005; Koegel et al.,1999), few have focused on self-regulation in aca-demic areas, including writing.

Because of the potential difficulties childrenwith ASD may experience during writing, there isa great need to create and/or validate interven-tions for children with ASD who struggle withwritten expression. In addition, because childrenwith ASD commonly lack effective self-regulatoryabilities, an intervention shown to improve self-regulation is warranted.

SELF-REGULATED STRATEGYDEVELOPMENT

The self-regulated strategy development (SRSD)model (Harris & Graham, 1996) is an instruc-tional approach designed to improve a writer'sstrategic behavior, knowledge, and motivation.SRSD instruction focuses on three goals. First,through direct instruction and guided and inde-pendent practice, students learn to carry out typi-cal composing processes such as planning.Second, students develop the knowledge and self-regulatory procedures (e.g., goal setting, self-mon-itoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement)they need to utilize the writing strategies whilecomposing. Finally, SRSD targets specific motiva-tional aspects such as self-efficacy and effort.

When using SRSD to teach a strategy, Gra-ham and Harris (1993) recommended that ateacher work recursively through six stages of in-struction: develop background knowledge, discusstbe strategy, model the strategy/self-instructions,memorize the strategy, support/collaborative prac-

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tice, and independent practice. These stages serveas a "metascript" that a teacher should modify tomeet student needs. (See Harris & Graham,1996; Harris, Graham, &C Mason, n.d.).

SRSD has improved the writing performanceof students with a range of abilities includinglearning disabilities (e.g.. Saddler et al., 2004), at-tention deficit hyperactivity disorder (e.g., Reid&C Lienemann, 2006), struggling writers withouta disability (Harris et al., 2006), and typicallyachieving writers (De La Paz & Graham, 2002).In addition, three i-ecent meta-analyses (Graham,2006; Graham & Harris, 2003; Graham & Perin,2007) suggest that SRSD has a strong, positive ef-fect on writing quality and in fact displayed thehighest average weighted effect size of any of thewriting interventions studied.

SRSD also appears to be a promising inter-vention for children with ASD. Three studieshave attempted to use the SRSD approach toteach writing to children with ASD (Asaro-Saddler &C Saddler, 2009; Delano, 2007a; Delano2007b). Delano (2007a) utilized the SRSDapproach in combination with video modeling toteach persuasive writing to three adolescents withAsperger's syndrome (AS). Results from this studywere generally positive, with each student increas-ing number of words used, number of essay ele-ments, and time spent writing. These results werenot maintained over time, however. Delano(2007b) used the SRSD approach with one mid-dle school student with AS. In this case study, thestudent was taught a vocabulary strategy forincreasing the use of action words and describingwords and a strategy for revising. After beingtaught the strategies, the student increased thenumber of action words and describing wordsused, revisions made, and quality of stories writ-ten. Asaro-Saddler and Saddler (2009) taught afourth-grader with AS a planning and story-writing strategy utilizing the SRSD approach. Re-sults indicated that the student increased hisnumber of words, number of story elements, andholistic quality after learning the strategy.

T H E P R E S E N T S T U D Y

The purpose of this study was to examine theeffects of teaching young writers with ASD who

have difficulty with written expression how toplan and write fictional stories using the SRSDmodel. We selected story writing as the instruc-tional genre because stories are frequently assessedon standardized exams such as the New York StateEnglish Language Arts (ELA) exam and have beenused in prior research with children with ASD(Asaro-Saddler & Saddler, 2009; Delano, 2007b).

This study extends previous research in threeimportant ways. First, we wanted to conduct amore rigorous test of SRSD by using a larger sam-ple of children with ASD and difficulties withwriting than had been previously accomplished.Second, we utilized a younger population (twosecond-graders and one fourth-grader) than theAsaro-Saddler and Saddler (2009) and Delano(2007a, 2007b) studies. We targeted youngerwriters because early intervention in writing ismore effective then waiting until later grades toaddress writing problems (Harris et al., 2006). Al-though research suggests that SRSD is effectivewith young writers with learning disabilities (e.g..Saddler et al., 2004), we cannot say with certaintyif young children with ASD can successfully usethese strategies or the self-regulation procedures.

Third, this was the first study that examinedthe extent children with ASD could transfer theirknowledge of writing a story about fictional char-acters using pictures to a story about themselvesusing a written prompt. Transfer is an importantskill that is difficult for young children with ASDto acquire (Hagiwara, 2001-2002), as they maybe less able to self-apply their knowledge to a newinstructional task, even when the instructional sit-uation is relatively similar (Moore, 2002) Al-though in this study the students learned to planand write stories about fictional characters usingpicture prompts, in the classroom they will befaced with many different genres of writing (e.g.descriptive, persuasive, expositive, and narrative)and many different prompts to stimulate thought(e.g., written, picture, movie, songs). In suchclasses, being able to transfer the ability to planand write to other genres using a variety ofprompts is essential. Could an instructed story-writing strategy using a picture as a prompt im-prove the participants' ability to write in anuninstructed genre (i.e., a narrative about them-selves) using a written story prompt? If so, thiscould be viewed as a measure of near transfer.

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Based on the success of SRSD in priorresearch (i.e., Graham, 2006; Graham & Harris,2003; Graham & Perin, 2007) and on thepromising effects with students with ASD inthree prior studies (Asaro-Saddler & Saddler,2009; Delano, 2007a, 2007b), we expected thatthe writing intervention delivered in this studywould have a positive effect on completeness interms of the story elements, overall holistic qual-ity, and length of stories written by students im-mediately following instruction and atmaintenance. Further, we anticipated that theknowledge gained during the intervention wouldtransfer to an uninstructed genre (personal narra-tive) using a different ty pe of prompt.

METHOD

DESIGN

We used a single-subject with multiple probesacross multiple baselines design to investigate theeffects of the intervention on the three partici-pants. Before instruction, we measured each par-ticipant's fictional story and personal narrativewriting ability to establisb typical performancelevels. A functional relationsbip between tbedependent measures and the participant's progresswas demonstrated only if the target skill improvedafter instruction and if the noninstructed partici-pants' performance stayed at or near preinterven-tion levels across baseline. Tbis design isconsidered particularly effective for students witbASD and is in fact recommended over group de-signs due to the limited sample sizes of studentswith ASD with similar characteristics (Simpson,2005).

SETTINC

The participants attended a public elementaryschool in New York. The school had approxi-mately 350 students in kindergarten throughGrade 4 who received instruction in various set-tings including general education classes, inclu-sion classes, and special education classes.Twenty-two percent of students at this schoolwere minority, with 9% having limited Englishproficiency. Fourteen percent of students were eli-gible for free or reduced-price lunch. In 2008,

77% of students in Grade 3 and 69% of studentsin Grade 4 met or exceeded the ELA standard.

Instruction took place outside the partici-pants' classrooms in an unoccupied location, (i.e.,another classroom, speech room, orchestra room,or conference room). Location of instruction oc-casionally changed depending on availability ofthe rooms in the school on various days.

PARTICIPANTS

The participants in this study met the followingcriteria: (a) documented diagnosis of ASD, (b)writing disability or at risk for writing disabilities,(c) no comorbid diagnosis of mental retardation,and (d) ability to write independently with a pen-cil or pen (as reported by the special educationteacher). Deficits in written expression as initiallyreported by the special education teacher werebased on writing samples collected during typicalwriting instruction in her classroom and con-firmed prior to beginning the intervention. As agroup, the stories produced by each participantwere short and of low quality. Teachers also notedthat the students did not engage in any overtplanning prior to writing.

To verify the students' writing ability we ad-ministered the Story Gonstruction subtest of theTest of Written Language, 3rd edition (TOWL-3;Hammil & Larsen, 1996) before beginning base-line testing. The Story Gonstruction subtest as-sesses a writer's ability to compose completestories by determining if several important ele-ments are included. Students are provided a pic-ture prompt and asked to write a story about thepicture. They are encouraged to plan before theywrite, and they have 15 min to complete the task.The TOWL-3 has a mean of 10 and a standarddeviation of 3. It is able to reliably differentiatebetween students with strong and weak writingskills, with reliability of .89 at the second-gradelevel and .90 at the fourth grade level. We consid-ered a deficit to equate to performance at orbelow one standard deviation below the mean.

The first participant, "Mike," was a 9-year-old Gaucasian male. He had received a diagnosisof Asperger's syndrome from a medical doctor atthe age of 3 and began receiving services at thattime. At the time of the study, Mike was in afourth-grade general education classroom, receiv-

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ing pull-out services in special education, speechand language therapy, occupational therapy, andcounseling. Recent testing information revealedthat he obtained a full-scale IQ score of 84 on theWechsler Individual Scale for Children-FourthEdition (WISC-IV; Wechsler, 2003). The WISChas a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.Mike's classroom writing goals involved stayingon topic and writing stories that had a beginning,middle, and end. His individualized educationprogram (IEP) included goals for use of figurativelanguage (e.g., idioms) in his writing. His class-room teacher stated that he was very creative andliked to tell stories, but that he was unable totransfer his thoughts to paper. He was also re-ported to be easily distracted, and often "lost histrain of thought." Both his classroom and specialeducation teachers reported that his handwritingwas difficult to read. His story writing consistedof short, often one-sentence, responses of poorquality that were more descriptions of the picturesthan stories. He engaged in no planning prior towriting. He scored a standard score of 5 on theTOWL-3 (Hammil & Larsen, 1996).

The second participant, "Justin," was a 6-year-old Caucasian male. He had been diagnosedwith autism at the age of 2 and began receivingservices at the age of 3. He was in a general edu-cation second-grade classroom at the time of thestudy and received services in special education,speech and language therapy, and occupationaltherapy. Justin's most recent testing inforniationfrom the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Chil-dren (KABC-II; Kaufman & Kaufman, 2004) didnot include a full-scale IQ score. His teachers re-ported that he was skilled in math, whereas read-ing and writing were more difficult. The writinggoal on his IEP was "to write a minimum of threesentences on a given topic using proper conven-tions of writing." His special education teacher re-ported that he had severe handwriting deficits andwas below average in terms of his writing ability,as he was "unable to write stories that containedplot, setting, characters, and other important fea-tures." His story writing was genetally of poorquality and often consisted of one-sentence re-sponses (i.e., "one day I was walking"). The sto-ries contained few elements, although at times heincluded a character's name and the phrase "oneday." He engaged in no planning prior to writing.

He achieved a standard score of 7 on the TOWL(Hammii & Larsen, 1996).

The third participant, "Ceorge," was a 7-year-old Caucasian male in second grade. He hadbeen diagnosed with autism at the age of 3 by amedical doctor and began receiving services at thetime of diagnosis. At the time of the study,Ceorge was in an integrated second-grade class-room and received services in special education,counseling, speech and language therapy, and oc-cupational therapy. The most recent testing infor-mation for Ceorge revealed that his full-scale IQaccording to the WISC-IV (Wechsler, 2003) was97. No additional information was available. Hisspecial education and classroom teachers reportedthat he had difficulty with literacy, especially withstaying on topic. A single writing goal on his IEPindicated he should "write a minimum of threesentences on a given topic using proper conven-tions of writing." Ceorge engaged in no planningprior to writing his stories. The final product wasoften of poor quality and typically consisted of asingle sentence that described the picture prompt(i.e., "tbe rabbit has a carrot"). Ceorge achieved astandard score of 8 on the TOWL (Hammil &Larsen, 1996). Even though this score did notmeet our deficit criteria, we believed based on hiswriting sample ("One time thar wus a caml the giside get out of here") he could benefit from theintervention.

PROCEDURES

The first author, who was an advanced doctoralstudent in Special Education with a Master's de-gree in Special Education and teacher certificationin Special Education at the time of the study, de-livered instruction to all of the participants. Shehad previous training and research experience inutilizing the SRSD approach to teach planningand story writing. Further, she had experience inteaching students with ASD, and had been ateacher of children on the autism spectrum, aswell as other disability groups, for 3 years.

Fictional Story Prompts. We used black-and-white line-drawn pictures as prompts for writingfictional stories during baseline, post treatment,and maintenance. The pictures had been used inprior research with children with learning disabili-ties (Saddler et al., 2004), with attention deficit

Exceptional Children

hyperactivity disorder (Reid &C Lienemann,2006), and students at risk for emotional and be-havioral disorders who were poor writers (Lane,Graham, Harris, &C Weisenbach, 2006). Thesepictures were considered to be of interest to stu-dents in this age range (Saddler et al., 2004). Thestories were previewed by the special educationteacher who reported that they should be of inter-est to each of the participants. Some of theseprompts included pictures of boys and girls sled-ding, an alien in a phone booth, and a girl pullinga large cracked egg in a wagon.

Personal Narrative Prompt. Along with thepicture prompt, we used a written story starterprompt as a generalization task to determinetransfer of the strategy to a different writing genre(i.e., personal narrative) from the task completedduring the intervention (i.e., fictional story writ-ing). With this task, intended to serve as a neartransfer/generalization measure, students wereasked to write a personal story about themselvesusing a written story prompt rather than an imag-inative story based on a picture. The personal nar-rative prompts consisted of written statementssuch as, "Write about something that happenedon the playground" and "Write about a timewhen you had fun." These topics had been usedin previous research (Saddler et al., 2004) andhave been found to be interesting for children towrite about. The topics were randomized forbaseline and posttreatment.

Baseline. During baseline each student wrotefictional stories and a single personal narrative toestablish pretreatment skill level for each genre.Each time the participants wrote a fictional storyduring baseline they were provided with two pic-tures and prompted to select one. Students weretold to plan their story before writing and thenwrite a story about the picture. No other prompt-ing was provided. They had 20 min to write theirstory. Pictures were randomly assigned to sets, andthe order of presentation was also randomized;however, the three students all received the samepictures from which to choose. When the studentsfinished writing their stories, they read themaloud, so that the instructor could identify wordsthat were misspelled or difficult to read. The per-sonal narrative was administered under the sameconditions, although provided only one prompt.

We collected a minimum of three baselinefictional stories prior to each participant enteringthe treatment phase. Students remained in thebaseline stage until their stories included a stablenumber of story elements.

Treatment After students displayed a stablebaseline performance for number of story ele-ments, the intervention began and continueduntil the student demonstrated mastery of thewriting strategy by independently writing a storywith all required story elements. Lessons were cri-terion-based rather than time-based to allow mas-tery of each of the six stages of instruction:develop background knowledge, discuss the strat-egy, model the strategy/self-instructions, memo-rize the strategy, support/collaborative practice,and independent practice. In general, the sessionslasted approximately 30 min each.

Afier students displayed a stable baselineperformance for number of story elements,the intervention began and continued until

the student demonstrated mastery of thewriting strategy by independently writinga story with all required story elements.

Posttreatment. Immediately after instructionended, each participant wrote three fictional sto-ries and one personal narrative under the sameconditions as baseline. We collected posttreat-ment probes over a 1-week period for each partic-ipant. These compositions were written withoutany prompting, cues, or guidance from the in-structor.

Maintenance. Four weeks after the final par-ticipant completed posttreatment testing, eachparticipant was administered one fictional storywriting task using a picture prompt to measurethe durability of the posttreatment achievementlevels. As in baseline and posttreatment, these sto-ries were written without any prompting, cues, orguidance from the instructor.

DEPENDENT MEASURES

Before scoring, all writing samples were typed. Nochanges were made to punctuation or spelling,and any identifying information was removed.

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Samples were then scored for number of story ele-ments, bolistic quality, and number of words.

Two graduate students unfamiliar with thedesign and purpose of the study served as raters,scoring all writing samples for number of story el-ements and bolistic quality. The first author pro-vided extensive training in scoring to botb raters.Interrater reliability for number of elements andholistic quality was established between the tworaters using point-by-point comparisons and cal-culated by tbe number of agreements divided byagreements plus disagreements. Reliability wascalculated first and then the two scores were aver-aged to arrive at the final reported scores fornumber of elements and holistic quality. Differ-ences in scores of one point were averaged,whereas scores that differed by more than onepoint were discussed until an agreement wasreached.

We used four measures to document changesfrom baseline to posttreatment: number of storyelements, overall holistic quality, number ofwords, and planning time. All of these measuresare commonly used in writing research (cf.Asaro-Saddler & Saddler, 2009; Graham, 2006;Graham & Harris, 2003; Graham & Perin, 2007;Reid & Lienemann, 2006; Saddler et al., 2004).Theoretically, increasing the number of story ele-ments, words, and the amount of planning timeshould have a positive effect on holistic quality.

Numher of Story Elements. Seven possible ele-ments could be incorporated in each writing sam-ple: main character(s) identification, a descriptionof the time of the story, a description of the placeof the story, what the main character(s) does orwants to do, yvhat happens after that, how thestory ends, and how the character(s) feel. Theseelements have been used in prior research (c.fSaddler et al., 2004) to gauge story completeness,and mirrored the WWW, What = 2, How = 2mnemonic (cf Graham & Harris, 2005). Weused these same elements to rate the personal nar-ratives, as both genres involve similar features(e.g., characters, setting, etc.).

The raters independently scored all writingsamples for the 7 elements. Raters had a list of allpossible story elements tbat could be included inthe stories and independently scored practice sto-ries for the presence of these elements. After inde-pendent scoring, we discussed the stories and

compared scores. Traming continued until relia-bility was established (percentage of agreement ator above 80%, maintained over several stories). In-terrater reliability for the exact scoring of the writ-ing samples from the study was 78%; however,for scores within one point, reliability was 92%.

Holistic Story Quality. We measured theholistic quality of the students' stories using an 8-point scale based on work by Graham and Harris(1989). Scores on the scale ranged from 1, repre-senting the lowest writing quality, to 8, represent-ing the highest. Raters read each paper to obtain ageneral impression of overall writing quality, fo-cusing on ideation, organization, sentence struc-ture, grammar, and vocabulary. While scoring,raters had an "anchor point" story for a low, mid-dle, and high holistic score; anchor points hadbeen developed and used in prior investigations(e.g., Graham & Harris, 2005; Saddler et al.,2004) and are considered representative of storieswritten by highly skilled, skilled, and less skilledyoung writers.

The first author introduced and explainedthe holistic scoring scale, and then the anchor sto-ries were scored. Following a discussion of howeach story differed qualitatively in comparison tothe anchor stories, each rater scored the practicecompositions independently. After independentscoring, we discussed the stories and comparedscores. Scoring continued until reliability was es-tablished (percentage of agreement at or above80%, maintained over five stories). Interrater reli-ability for the stories was 78%; for scores within 1point of each other, reliability was 100%.

Total Numher of Words. We used MicrosoftWord's Word Count function to count the num-ber of words in each story; we counted a word ifit was at least one character long and was clearlyseparated from other characters by a space beforeand after it. We included story tides in the wordcount. Reliability was not calculated becauseword count was computer generated.

Evidence of Planning. To determine if tbe in-tervention affected planning behavior, we collectedand examined any notes students wrote before orduring writing. These included notes written onseparate pieces of paper or on the writing sample.We also recorded any verbal comments indicatingplanning or strategy use. In addition, we collectedtbe amount of time spent planning prior to

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writing. Prewriting planning time was calculatedas the time interval between when the instructortold the student to begin writing and when thestudent began to write the composition.

Social Validity. After completing the inter-vention, we conducted interviews with each par-ticipant to assess the social validity of theintervention. This interview was intended to ob-tain information on the students' perceived valueof the strategies and to assess the effectiveness ofthe teaching procedures (Harris et al., 2006). Weadapted the interview questions from Mason,Snyder, Sukhram, and Kedem (2006): Has usingthe writing strategies helped you become a betterwriter? How? What have you learned since work-ing with (instructor)? How do you think thesestrategies would help other children? If you werethe teacher, would you teach these strategies tochildren? Why? If you were the teacher, wouldyou change anything? From these lessons, whathelped you most?

CENE RAL INSTRUCTIONAL PROCEDURES

The planning and story writing strategy includeda mnemonic device, POW (Harris & Graham,1992), to help students organize the planning andwriting process by encouraging them to:

Pick my ideas (i.e., decide what to writeabout).

Organize my notes (i.e., develop an advancedwriting plan), andWrite and say more (i.e., expand the planwhile writing).

A second mnemonic, WWW, What = 2, How =2, reminded students to generate notes for sevenbasic parts of a story during the second step ofPOW. Each letter of this mnemonic keyed thestudents to write notes for each of the followingquestions:

Who are the main characters?When does the story take place?Where does the story take place?What do the main characters want to do?What happens when the main characters tryto do it?How does the story end?How do the main characters feel?

INDIVIDUAL LESSON PROCEDURES

The study's six lessons were based on the SRSDinstructional model (Harris & Graham, 1992),and utilized the same specific procedures as inprevious research (c.f Asaro-Saddler & Saddler,2009).

First Lesson. During the first lesson, we devel-oped background knowledge of the parts of astory and the significance and discussed use of thestrategy. The first mnemonic device, POW (Gra-ham & Harris, 1989), was introduced and theimportance explained. Each student practiced themnemonic until he could explain what POWstood for, and its importance.

The instructor then discussed what makes astory "good," and the instructor and the partici-pant created a list of what constitutes good writ-ing. The idea that good stories make sense andcontain different parts was stressed. Themnemonic device WWW, What = 2, How = 2(Graham & Harris, 1989) was introduced as a"trick" for remembering the seven parts to includein a story. The instructor showed the participant achart listing the letters of the mnemonic devicealong with their meaning and discussed how awriter might include each in a story.

The instructor then read a story aloud whilethe participant followed along silently. Rereadingthe story, the participant was asked to identifywhen he heard a story part in the story. As a storypart was identified, the instructor wrote it onto astory parts graphic organizer. The story parts werethen practiced until the participant could identifyall the parts.

Second Lesson. Each lesson from this point onbegan with a review and practice of the POW(Graham & Harris, 1989) and story parts re-minder strategy until the participant could pro-vide and explain each entirely from memory.Instruction then began with the participant ana-lyzing a story he wrote at baseline to identity howmany story parts were present. If the participantwished, he could do this analysis for all of his sto-ries. A story parts graph was provided for eachstory and a discussion followed concerning whichparts were included and which were not (see Sad-dler et al, 2004). The instructor and the partici-pant then discussed ways in which the missinginformation could be included. Next, the instruc-

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tor explained that even an included story partcould be made better. A "rocket chart" reinforce-ment tool for each lesson (see Saddler et al.,2004) depicted a rocket ship with seven boxes forthe seven story elements; participants would fill ina box for each of the elements included in theirstory. Students were encouraged to fill the sevenboxes by including all seven story-writing ele-ments.

Third Lesson. This lesson introduced self-statements designed to elicit good story ideas andstory parts. The instructor modeled the process ofwriting a story using POW (Graham & Harris,1989) and the story parts reminder while the par-ticipant provided ideas. During this process, theinstructor verbalized self-instructions to assistwith problem definition (e.g.. What do I have dohere?), planning (e.g.. What comes next?), self-evaluation (e.g.. Does that make sense?), self-rein-forcement (e.g., I really like that part!), andcoping (e.g., I'm almost finished!). A discussion ofthe importance of self-talk followed the storywriting, with the instructor and participant dis-cussing the types of self-statements that could beused while writing and creating a list of possiblestatements.

Fourth Lesson. Tbis lesson incorporated timefor a collaborative writing experience wherein theinstructor and the participant crafted a story to-gether using the entire writing process and thegraphic organizer. This time, however, the partici-pant led the process with the researcher only pro-viding support as needed. The participant thenread his finished story aloud and graphed thestory parts. This stage enabled us to verify memo-rization of the mnemonic. Mike and Justin hadthe strategy memorized by this lesson. George re-ceived additional practice until he was able to re-cite the mnemonic by memory without anyprompt.

Fifth Lesson. During this lesson, the partici-pant and instructor set a goal to reach all sevenstory elements. They made a plan for the story to-gether, but the participant took the lead. Insteadof being provided with the graphic organizer, theparticipant was told to plan each part of the storyon a scrap of paper before beginning to write it,and reminded to use bis self-statements. The in-structor continued to provide support and en-couragement as needed (pointing to the self-

statements list or reminders to use the strategy),but the level of each was faded. After the storywas completed, the participant read it aloud; theparticipant and instructor identified the storyparts included, graphed the parts, and notedwhether the story met the goal of seven elements.They then discussed how the strategies helped im-prove each part of the story. Once the participantreached criterion (seven story elements) withoutthe use of the graphic organizer and self-state-ment list, he began tbe next lesson.

Sixth Lesson. In this lesson the participantwrote another story without the use of supportsor assistance. He was provided a choice of twopictures, a piece of paper and a pencil, and in-structed to plan and write his story. He recitedthe mnemonic to the researcher, and began towrite bis story. He then shared the story with theresearcher and they graphed the story together.When the participant reached criterion (i.e.,wrote a story independently that contained allseven elements), he moved on to posttreatmenttesting.

TREATMENT INTEGRITY

Two procedures assessed integrity of instruction.First, each lesson was scripted with space providedfor the instructor to check off each step as it wastaught. This ensured delivery of the lesson in ac-cordance with the plan and gave us a record of in-struction completion. The second author checkedthat all steps had been completed for all partici-pants for all lessons.

Second, we tape-recorded eacb of tbe ses-sions. The second author randomly selected onehalf of the total tapes at the end of the interven-tion, and listened to them while following alongwith a copy of the script to ensure that the lessonswere being followed. The second author foundthat 100% of the steps were followed according tothe lesson scripts.

DATA ANALYSIS

A visual analysis of the means for number ofwords, number of story elements, and holisticquality compared baseline to posttreatment tomaintenance for each participant for botb writingtasks. In addition to tbis visual analysis, we alsoanalyzed the data using the percentage of

Exceptional Children 1 IS

TABLE 1

Means, Standard Deviations, and Percentages of Nonoverlapping Data for Participants Across Phases

Participant/Phase

MikeBaselinePosttreatmentMaintenancePND

JustinBaselinePosttreatmentMaintenancePND

GeorgeBaselinePosttreatmentMaintenancePND

Quality

M

3.004.504.50100%

1.703.804.0075%

0.903.603.50100%

SD

0.500.50

0.951.25

0.540.28

Elements

M

3.306.605.00100%

2.506.606.50100% .

1.606.503.00100%

SD

0.570.28

0.700.28

0.540.50

Total Words

M

42.3050.3061.0075%

10.7538.3025.00100%

8.2027.3029.00100%

SD

8.106.40

6.028.62

4.493.21

Note. PND = percentage of nonoverlapping data.

nonoverlapping data (PND) procedure describedby Scruggs, Mastropieri, and Casto (1987). Weused the following recommended guidelines: 90%of the posttreatment and maintenance points ex-ceeding the extreme baseline value indicated avery effective treatment; 70% to 90%, an effectivetreatment; 50% to 70%, a questionable treat-ment; and less than 50%, an ineffective treat-ment. This type of analysis is commonly used insingle-subject research designs and has beenproven to detect intervention effects (Campbell,2004). Table 1 presents means, standard devia-tions, and PND for each measure.

RESU LTS

FICTIONAL STORY ELEMENTS

All three students increased the number of storyelements included in their fictional stories (seeFigure 1). Mike increased the number of elementsfrom an average of 3.3 elements (3, 4, and 3) atbaseline to an average of 6.6 elements (6.5, 7, and6.5) at posttreatment. His maintenance story in-cluded 5 elements, which was lower than his post-treatment average, but higher than his baselinescores. His PND was 100%, indicating a very ef-fective treatment. Justin improved from an aver-

age of 2.5 elements (3, 1.5, 3, and 2.5) at baselineto an average of 6.6 elements (6.5, 6.5, and 7) atposttreatment and 6.5 elements at maintenance.His PND was also 100%, showing a very effectivetreatment. Ceorge had the greatest gains, increas-ing from an average of 1.6 elements (2, 2, 2, 1,and 1) at baseline to an average of 6.5 elements(6, 7, and 6.5) at posttreatment. At maintenancehis story included 6 elements, making his PND100%, signifying a very effective treatment.

HOLISTIC QUALITY

In examining overall story quality, all three stu-dents improved their scores from baseline to post-treatment (see Figure 2). Mike had an average of3 quality points (2.5, 3.5, and 3) at baseline. Heimproved to an average of 4.5 (4, 5, and 4.5) atboth posttreatment and maintenance. His PNDwas 100%. Justin improved his average of qualitypoints from 1.7 (3, 2, 1, and 1) at baseline to 3.8(2.5, 5, and 4) at posttreatment. At maintenancehis story scored a 4 in quality, bringing his PNDto 75%. Ceorge had the greatest gains, increasingfrom an average of 0.9 quality points (1.5, 1.5,0.5, 0.5, and 0.5) at baseline to 3.6 quality points(4, 3.5, and 3.5) at posttreatment. His mainte-nance story scored 3.5 quality points. His PND

1 16 Fall2010

F I G U R E 1Number of Flements for Participants Across Phases

76.5

65.5

54.5

43.5

32.5

21.5

10.5

0

76.5

i '\J 4.5

' o 3.5Ö 3

utnb

Z 1.51

0.50

y6.5

65.5

54.5

43.5

32.5

21.5

10.5

0

Baseline

•

/ \

1 2 3

1

•1

I'osttreatmenc

•

4 5 6

2 3 4

2

Ptobe

Maintenance

a

7

• ^ *• 9r^

5 6 7

3 4 5

Mike

•

Justin

8

6 7 8

Geotge

9• = Story• = Nartativc

was 100%. The PND for all three students, there-fore, indicated a very effective treatment.

NUMBER OF WORDS

Each student improved the average number ofwords from baseline and posttreatment (see Fig-ure 3). Participant 1, Mike, wrote an average of42.3 words (individual number on tests 1, 2, and3 were 46, 48, and 33, respectively) during base-line and an average of 50.3 words (43, 55, and53) during posttreatment. At maintenance, hisstory was longer than all other stories, with 61words. Mike's PND was 75%, indicating an effec-

tive treatment. Justin, wrote an average of 10.75words (19, 8, 5, and 11) during baseline and in-creased to an average of 38.3 words (29, 46, and40) at posttteatment. Justin's final baseline probeactually included more words than the second-to-last probe. However, because the number of ele-ments was used as the phase change variable, wechose to move him into the treatment condition.At maintenance, he wrote 25 words, lower thanhis posttreatment average, but still over twice aslong as his baseline average. His PND was 100%,indicating a very effective treatment. The thirdparticipant, George, increased his number ofwords from an average of 8.2 words (12, 14, 5, 6,

Exceptional Children 1 17

F I G U R E 2

Holistic Quality for Participants Across Phases

87.5

76.5

65.5

54.5

43.5

32.5

21.5

0.50

87.5

76.5

65.5

5B 4.5c 4

^ 2O* 1.5

0.50

87.5

76.5

65.5

54.5

43.5

32.5

21.5

10.5

Q

Baseline Posttreatment Maintenance

1 2 3

• •

4 5 6

• > •

1 2 3 4

7

/ \• / >//

5 6 7

4 * *1 2 3 4 5

^ •

8

6 7 8• = Story

Probe • " Narracive

Mike

Justin

, George

•J

and 4) at baseline to an average of 27.3 words(31, 26, and 25) at posttreatment. He wrote 29words at maintenance, making bis PND 100% aswell, indicating a very effective treatment.

TRANSFER TO PERSONAL NARRATIVE

All participants increased tbeir number of ele-ments from baseline to posttreatment in their per-sonal narratives. Mike only increased slightly, ashe included 5 elements at baseline and increasedto 6 elements at posttreatment. Justin demon-strated tbe greatest increase, from 3 elements atbaseline to 7 at posttreatment. George increased

bis number of elements from zero in his baselinenarrative to 3 in his posttreatment narrative.

Holistic quality scores of the personal narra-tive samples also increased for all 3 participantsfrom baseline to posttreatment. Mike, Justin, andGeorge increased from scores of 2.5, 1, and 0 toA, A, and 2.5, respectively.

For number of words, Mike remained static,with his baseline narrative sample and his post-treatment sample botb containing 40 words.Justin increased his number of words from 5 atbaseline to 33 at posttreatment. George also in-creased number of words, from 2 at baseline to 23at posttreatment.

1 18 Fall 2010

F I G U R E 3Number of Words for all Participants Across Phases

6055504540353025201510

50

605550454035302520-1510

50

60555045403530252015105

Baseline Posttreatment Maintenance

Mike

Justin

Probe

7 8StotyNartative

Geori

EVIDENCE OF PLANNING

Mike did not plan during baseline. He increasedplanning time to an average of 5 min during post-treatment. Justin also exhibited no planning dur-ing his baseline stories. During posttreatment,Justin increased his planning time slightly, to anaverage of 1 min spent planning. George plannedduring one baseline probe for 30 s, and then ex-hibited no planning for the other baseline stories.During his posttreatment stories he planned foran average of 3 min.

SOCIAL VALIDITY

Upon completing the final posttreatment probe,the student responded to a brief six-question in-terview to determine the social validity of the in-tervention (Mason et al., 2006):

;. Has using tbe POW and WWW strategieshelped you become a better writer? How? All threeparticipants reported that they thought they werebetter writers for having learned the strategy.Mike said that he was a better writer because hecould write about more things and be sure to in-clude the elements. Justin reported that he "writes

Exceptional Children

better stories now" because he had more to say.George reported that he was a better writer be-cause he could "write more" in his stories.

2. What have you learned since working with(instructor)^ All three participants responded thatthey learned the strategy to help them include allof the elements in their stories. Mike also men-tioned that he learned, "POW can give you powerwhen you write."

3. How do you think these strategies would helpother children? All three participants suggestedthat the strategy could help other children be-cause it would remind them to use more parts intheir stories and help them write better stories.

4. If you were the teacher, would you teach thesestrategies to children? Why? Mike and Justin saidthat they would because it would help the stu-dents become better writers. George said maybe.When prompted, he said that he was not sure be-cause he "would not want to make them write somuch," but he "probably would." When askedwhy he would teach it, he said, "so they couldwrite better stories." .

5. Lf you were the teacher, would you changeanything? Mike said that he would only use pic-tures (instead of the written story prompt) be-cause pictures "are easier to think of a lot to writeabout." Justin said he would add math to thestrategy (math was his favorite subject). Georgesaid that if he wrote less it would be better. Itshould be noted that for several of the lessonsGeorge asked the researcher to write for him be-cause his hand "hurt."

6. From these lessons, what helped you most? Alltbt-ee participants noted that the WWW strategy(Graham & Harris, 1989) was the most helpfulfor them. Mike said that this strategy helped him"write more and think of more things to say."Mike also added that he liked being given achoice of pictures each time, because sometimes itis hard to think of ideas for only one picture.Justin said that the best part was the WWW strat-egy because it helped him to "add more" to hisstories. George agreed that the best part of tbelessons was i:he WWW strategy because it re-minded him to include all seven elements. Georgealso commented that he could "use this strategyin the classroom when writing," indicating thathe saw the importance of transferring his use ofthe strategy to other settings.

D I S C U S S I O N

Ghildren with ASD exhibit a wide variety of char-acteristics that may inhibit their abilities to writeeffectively. Their planning ability is likely im-pacted by difficulties with abstract thinking andimagining possible future events and scenarios(Myles, 2005; Myles & Simpson, 2001; Winter,2003). Their stories are typically short, nonde-scriptive, and poorly organized; these childrenoften lack the ability to elaborate or aiiange tbeirthoughts or provide insight into their thinking(Losh & Gapps, 2003; Moore, 2002; Myles et al.,2003). Finally, children with ASD may also ex-hibit poor self-regulatory and self-managementskills (Bieberich & Morgan, 2004; Koegel et al.,1999)—and such skills are critical to writing.

Results from this study revealed that instruc-tion in planning and story writing utilizing theSRSD approach improved the quality of storywriting for young children with ASD. The partic-ipants were able to learn and apply the targetedstrategies, and this resulted in better writing onposttreatment and maintenance fictional storyprobes. This supports the findings of Asaro-Saddler and Saddler (2009) and Delano (2007a,2007b), who also reported improvements in thequality of stories written by children with ASDafter being taugbt a siory-planning strategythrough the SRSD approach. Each of our partici-pants further reported that the strategy was usefuland that they believed they were better writersafter having been taught the strategy, an outcomevery similar to the findings from Asaro-Saddlerand Saddler. However, in the current study wefound that participants generalized their knowl-edge to a different type of writing task. This resultwas especially encouraging as children with ASDoften have difficulty generalizing skills across tasks((Griffin et al., 2006).

Throughout the study, the students exhibitedspontaneous use of tbe types of SRSD self-regula-tory bebaviors they had.learned (i.e., self-state-ments, goal setting, self-reinforcement). Forexample, during a posttreatment session, Mikeused a self-statement, saying "I know I can dothis" when he was having difficulty rememberingone of the elements. We observed self-monitoringon several occasions; the students would use theirplanning notes to monitor whether they had used

12O Fall 2010

all of the elements in their stories. Mike andJustin both exhibited goal-setting, during instruc-tional sessions when they had failed to use allseven elements in their stories. They both estab-lished a goal to include all seven elements in theirstories the next day, without a prompt from theinstrtictor. We did not observe any spontaneoususe of self-reinforcement during this study.

Each of the students further demonstratedstrategy awareness during the transfer task at post-treatment. While writing, Mike said, "This ishard without the picture, but I know I can do it."He also wrote seven bullets on his paper andcrossed them off as he used each of the elements.After he completed the task and was walking backto his classroom, he commented that he knew heleft out one of the elements. Justin was also ob-served to write seven lines and cross them out ashe included the elements. Ceorge, when given thenarrative prompt, asked, "Do I still use the strat-egy?" He then verbalized the elements of themnemonic several times while writing.

The particular writing strategy tatight in thisstudy involved planning a story. All three partici-pants engaged in little or no covert planning priorto the intervention. It was encouraging to findthat after learning the WWW, What = 2, How =2 strategy (Craham & Harris, 1989), all of thestudents increased their planning time andshowed some overt form of planning while writ-ing their posttreatment stories. Although the timespent planning at posttreatment was still veryshort, the intervention did appear to increase theparticipants' awareness of the need for effectiveplanning in the creation of a higher quality story.

Mike, for example, had difficulty with hand-writing and writing for long periods of time,characteristics of many children with ASD (Chaz-iuddin, Buder, Tsai, & Chaziuddin, 1994; Cross,1994). Perhaps because of these difficulties, hewas resistant to planning; he said that it was "toomuch writing." Despite these obstacles, he in-creased the time he spent on planning from zeroat baseline to an average of 5 min planning in ad-vance of writing at posttreatment. He also seemedaware that when he did not plan, his stories werelower in overall quality and did not contain asmany of the elements. For instance, during themaintenance writing task, he did not plan; afterthe story was written and read out loud, he was

asked if he thought he included all of the ele-ments. He said, "No probably not. Probably be-cause I did not write my notes first."

Justin also did not engage in planning atbaseline, leading to stories that were one-line de-scriptions of the picture prompt. His posttreat-ment stories were much more complete in termsof story elements and higher in overall quality.These increases in quality were accompanied by aslighdy increased planning time of 1 min. How-ever, this small amount of time may not accu-rately reflect all of the planning he engaged in, ashe demonstrated planning behaviors while writ-ing. For instance, during each posttreatment andmaintenance story, Justin wrote seven lines on asheet of paper that represented the seven story ele-ments. As he wrote an element, he would crossthe line out, and then think about what he wasgoing to write next. When asked, he said that hedid this "to remember to use all of [bis] ele-ments." This is not atypical of children withwriting disabilities, wbo tend to generate ideas"on tbe fly" (Craham, Harris, & Mason, 2005, p.210): ideas are created during writing rather thanin advance of writing.

Ceorge also exhibited an increase in planningtime, from an average of 30 s at baseline to aver-age of 3 min planning at posttreatment. He oftenwrote the word for the elements (e.g., who orwhat) and crossed them out as he included thatparticular element in his stories. During the firstposttreatment ptobe, he spent 5 min planningand often looked at the instructor and said "Mybrain is thinking."

BARRIERS TO STRATEGY ACQUISITION

Although the participants increased performancein the areas assessed, several characteristics typicalof children with ASD could have functioned asbarriers that prevented more robust skill gains.First, many children with ASD are resistant tochange and need sameness, particularly in theirscheduling (Moore, 2002). However, the schedul-ing of the intervention required mpdifying thestudents' daily routine, resulting in one missinghis Morning Program time, and another missingtime with one of his favorite teachers. Thesechanges proved upsetting to the two affected stu-dents (Justin and Ceorge) as each informed the

Exceptional Children 121

instructor that they would have rather been intheir normal routine.

Second, many students with ASD typicallyexhibit distractibility (Williams, 1995). Knowingthat distractibility is a characteristic of studentswith ASD, we attempted to find quiet distrac-tion-free locations. There were times, however,when other teachers or students walked into orpast the instructional location. When this oc-curred, the students lost focus and requiredprompting to remain on task. No prompting ofany kind was provided during the posttreatmentor maintenance phases, however. Finally, the stu-dents' difficulty with handwriting and writing forextended periods of time, often typical of childrenwith ASD (Gross, 1994), may also have limitedtheir ability both to acquire the strategy and toproduce more effective written products.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

All of the participants demonstrated improve-ments in their overall story-writing ability andwere able to transfer their strategic knowledge ofstory planning to an uninstructed genre. This isan important outcome, as despite less than opti-mum conditions, learning the strategy throughthe SRSD approach had a strong, positive effecton their writing more generally. These findingsprovide several educational implications for teach-ers. First, all three patticipants reported that themnemonic device included in the SRSD ap-proach, used to teach the steps of the strategy andto organize the story elements, was the most im-portant part of the strategy. This was not surpris-ing, as children with ASD often require thatinformation is presented in a concrete manner(Griffin et al., 2006; Myles & Simpson, 2001)and are often visual learners (Moore, 2002).

In addition, students with ASD often havedifficulty with self-regulation, including self-talk(Joseph at al., 2005). Because self-regulation is akey aspect of SRSD, teachers of children withASD may have to provide extensive training andmodeling in supportive self-talk. Working withthe students to create a list of self-statements, in-cluding self-reinforcement and self-managementstatements, might be beneficial to these students,as it provides them with a model of how to self-

regulate. Training should then occur through di-rect instruction and practice.

Finally, because handwriting may be prob-lematic for students with ASD, as it was for theparticipants in this study, teachers should con-sider an alternative to physically writing the storywith pen/pencil. A logical alternative might be toallow the student to use a typewriter or othertechnology device. Or, they might allow studentsto orally tell and tape record their stories, andthen have a peer transcribe the story for them.

LIMITATIONS

Although this study provides valuable informa-tion into the possible use of strategy instructionutilizing an SRSD approach for students withASD, there were several limitations. First, therewere only three participants in this single-subjectstudy. Future research replicating the study with älarger and more diverse group of participantsmight determine validity and generalizability ofthe treatment. Along with the small sample, theintervention period was brief There were only sixlessons lasting between 7 and 9 days, rangingfrom approximately 2 to 4 weeks of intervention.If the instruction had been delivered for moretime, greater gains might have resulted.

The generalization task of writing a personalnarrative should be considered with caution. Al-though the task asked students to write about apast experience rather than a fictional story abouta character, the participants might not have dis-tinguished between the tasks and may have justwritten a fictional story. This was particularly evi-dent in Justin's personal narrative, where he wrotea name rather than "I."

In addition, we were only able to obtainmaintenance probes 4 weeks after the study wascompleted. Therefore, it was not possible to de-termine whether the students were able to main-tain their gains beyond those 4 weeks. Similarly,we were unable to collect writing samples in an-other setting.

Finally, the participants in this study weregenerally high-functioning students with ASD,and all had verbal language abilities and minimalbehavioral concerns. These particular students re-quired no modifications to the lesson plans.Given the heterogeneity of children with ASD,

1 2 2 Fall 2010

lower-functioning students on the spectrum, stu-dents with lower cognitive abilities, or studentswith less developed language abilities might notbenefit as much from the intervention withoutmodifications. They may require that skills andstrategies be further broken down into simplersteps, and it may take them longer to memorizeand utilize them, depending more on cues fromthe instructor to apply them (Koegel et al., 1999).In addition, students with behavioral concernsmight need additional supports, such as an incen-tive system earning tbem positive reinforcementfor appropriate behavior (Lane et al., 2006).

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ABOUT THE A U T H O R S

KRISTIE ASARO-SADDUER (New York GEG),Visiting Assistant Professor; and BRUCESADDLER (New York GEC), Associate Professor,Department of Educational and Counseling Psy-chology, State University of New York at Albany.

Correspondence concerning this article should beaddressed to Kristie Asaro-Saddler, Education245, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY12222 (e-mail: kasaro@uamail.albany.edu).

Manuscript received September 2008; acceptedSeptember 2009.

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