Social Stories and Visual Supports Interventions for Students at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Antecedent interventions are often used preventatively to address engagement, but few studies have evaluated their effectiveness with students at risk for disability. This study evaluated the effectiveness of two commonly recommended antecedent interventions that have limited empirical support for use with students at risk: social stories and visual supports. Both interventions were evaluated separately in the context of two single-case alternating treatments designs across five elementary students at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Social stories were not effective for improving students’ levels of engagement during targeted activities; visual supports resulted in increases in students’ engagement relative to baseline conditions. Future use of visual supports for students at risk should include evaluations of the feasibility of implementation by teaching staff.

Noncompliance Measurement Pre-Print, Malone et al., 2023

“…For example, during a discussion activity with peers, a student with extensive support needs may be considered engaged for all the following behaviors: rocking back and forth, handling relevant materials, and responding to a peer with a voice output device (Cosbey & Johnston, 2006). A student with language and behavioral support needs (e.g., students with or at-risk for EBD) may NONCOMPLIANCE MEASUREMENT 12 be considered engaged when transitioning independently to a new location, visually attending to instruction, or completing activities with proper supports such as visual activity schedules (Zimmerman et al, 2017), within-activity choice (Cole & Levinson, 2002), or academic supports (e.g., hundreds chart; Zimmerman et al, 2020). Individual differences in how students access instruction, and thereby demonstrate engagement, often necessitates an individualized definition of engagement.…”

“…"Unengaged" can be defined as the absence of engagement or participation, which also varies across students. For some, unengaged may look like using materials unrelated to instruction (e.g., reading a library book instead of participating in math instruction), unresponsiveness when given supports and opportunities to respond, or engaging in other CB such as elopement or throwing academic materials (Zimmerman et al, 2020). When defining "unengaged" it is important to note that engagement in the instructional environment is not always a necessary behavior; for example, a student may appear to be doing "nothing" during a long writing period when they are critically thinking about the writing task, or a student may engage in an unrelated activity if they have completed their work.…”

“…This comparison method, called often called "normative peer comparisons", has been found to be an adequate method (Johnson et al, 2016;Riley-Tillman et al, 2008) for decisionmaking regarding cascading supports for students (Simonsen et al, 2019). To identify a normative peer, the data collector may choose to randomly select one to two peers and collect engagement data simultaneously alongside the target student, or the relevant educator may also help identify a student who, in their estimation, displays average levels of engagement, and simultaneously collect data for that student (Zimmerman et al, 2020).…”

Social Skills Practice Strategy Opportunities for Students With EBD

“…Social Stories, an empirically-supported practice that has been utilized for a variety of learners, involves using stories with visual cues and text sequencing to teach social skills (Garwood & Van Loon, 2019;Qi et al, 2018). These stories are typically read immediately before a student is exposed to a situation where they are expected to display the appropriate social behavior and can also incorporate role-playing (Awbrey et al, 2008;Zimmerman et al, 2020). For students with EBD, Social Stories can provide an opportunity for the practitioner and student to examine a story that can illustrate a scenario that may be new to the student.…”

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Engagement and Achievement in Early Childhood Research

“…Children’s classroom engagement has been identified as a critical catalyst for their learning and achievement (Fisher et al, 1980). The construct of engagement in early childhood has been defined as orientation to and appropriate interaction with instruction and instructional activities (Bennett et al, 2011; Zimmerman et al, 2020), social partners (Ledford et al, 2020), instructional materials or tasks (Zimmerman et al, 2017), and/or appropriate transitions between or across activities and routines (Bryan & Gast, 2000) in early childhood settings. Given the multifaceted dimensions of the construct of engagement relevant to the early childhood context, we henceforth define engagement broadly as children’s developmentally appropriate interactions across multiple contexts in the learning environment (McWilliam & Casey, 2008).…”