Utilization of Mobile Technology Applications to Promote Early Literacy in Children with Complex Communication Needs

This pilot study was conducted to determine the methods and project data for the effectiveness of the mobile application Accessible Literacy Learning (ALL) in teaching individuals who are nonverbal or have complex communication needs phonological awareness and emergent literacy skills. The researchers used a single-subject experimental design and followed the procedural suggestions given by the application using the teacher-assisted format. Participants for this study were between the age of two and eight years old and have exhibited severe language communication delays and excluded children with severe cognitive delays. Participants received two to four weeks of intervention two to four times a week for twenty minutes per intervention session. During each intervention session, each participant received two complete Accessible Literacy Learning sessions and were given prompts at the end of the intervention session to determine their progress. Our procedures and methods are based on the research performed by Janice Light and David McNaughton, the developers of Accessible Literacy Learning. This study differs because it analyzes the effectiveness of the methods used in the application and the results of knowledge-of-response feedback versus response-contingent feedback. Our focus for this study was dependent on the needs of the child, which ranged from sound-blending and letter-sound correspondence. The results of this pilot aim to prove necessity for a full-scale study to investigate whether the application Accessible Literacy Learning is an effective tool in the field of speech-language pathology in teaching sound-blending and letter-sound correspondence to children who are nonverbal or have complex communication needs