Sight word reading in children with developmental disabilities: A comparison of paired associate and picture-to-text matching instruction

Numerous instructional techniques have been used to teach sight word reading skills to individuals with developmental disabilities. The results of research incorporating paired associate instruction, in which familiar pictures are paired with unknown print stimuli, suggest that pictures “block” (i.e., interfere with) learners’ ability to recognize novel text. On the other hand, there is some evidence that both stimulus fading and picture-to-text matching techniques can be used successfully to teach sight word recognition. The present study used an adapted alternating treatments design [Sindelar, P. T., Rosenberg, M. S., & Wilson, R. J. (1985). An adapted alternating treatments design for instructional research. Education and Treatment of Children, 8, 67–76] to compare paired associate and picture-to-text matching techniques for teaching a small corpus of unknown words to two children with developmental disabilities. Results indicated that the picture-to-text matching condition was more effective than the paired associate condition for developing a small sight word vocabulary. Follow-up data for one participant showed that skills developed using the picture-to-text matching strategy were maintained 4 months after intervention. Further research is necessary to extend these findings, particularly in terms of the development of larger sight word vocabularies and the transition from sight word reading to more conventional reading skills.