The Effect of Self-Instructional Procedures on LD Students' Handwriting Performance

Hammill Institute on Disabilities

The Effect of Self-Instructional Procedures on LD Students' Handwriting PerformanceAuthor(s): Steve GrahamSource: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 231-234Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1510802 .

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REPORTS

THE EFFECT OF SELF-INSTRUCTIONAL PROCEDURES

ON LD STUDENTS' HANDWRITING PERFORMANCE

.Steve Graham

A review of current handwriting research reveals that a combination of instructional techniques is generally superior to any single tech- nique (Graham & Madan, 1981; Graham & Miller,. 1980). Thus, the pairing of behavioral and cognitive techniques within a systematic framework should provide practitioners with an effective means of teaching letter formation. Yet, Robin, Armel, and O'Leary (1975) found limited support for this position based on their examina- tion of the impact of three instructional programs (i.e., self-instruction plus direct training, direct training, and no-treatment) on the letter formation skills of kindergarteners with writing deficiencies. Self-instruction plus direct training was found to be superior to direct training, while both procedures proved to be superior to no-treatment. However, the authors indicated that it was difficult to teach subjects to self-instruct and that the overall procedure was cumbersome. Addi- tionally, high rates of self-verbalization were not significantly correlated with superior handwriting performance. It is possible that the subjects in this study were too young to adequately use self- verbalizations to guide complex motor behaviors.

The present study was designed to determine the effectiveness of a self-instructional procedure in improving and maintaining the letter- formation skills of learning disabled (LD) students with writing deficiencies. In order to assess generalization, performance on both trained and untrained letters was measured across a variety of settings. In contrast to the Robin et al. (1975) study, subjects were older and had received prior handwriting instruction.

METHOD Subjects and Setting

The study was conducted in three special education resource rooms in a suburban com- munity in the Midwest with three students, one female and two males, serving as subjects. The subjects met the following criteria: (a) identified as learning disabled by the participating school district, (b) described in a verbal report from the resource room teacher as evidencing severe difficulty in properly forming manuscript letters, and (c) scoring 2 or less on the Bezzi Hand- writing Scale (1962).

The subjects (Valentine, Michael, and Smith) were all right-handed Caucasians. Valentine was enrolled in the fourth grade while Michael and Smith attended third grade. At the onset of the study, Valentine, Michael, and Smith were 11 years, 7 months, 10 years, 4 months, and 10 years, 4 months old, respectively. Although Valentine's IQ on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) was assessed to be 78 (Verbal IQ, 79; Performance IQ, 81), her performance on previous intelligence tests fell within the normal range. On the Peabody Individual Achievement Test she obtained achievement grade equivalents of 1.9 on reading recognition and 2.3 on mathematics. Michael's IQ on the WISC-R was 96 (Verbal IQ, 92; Performance IQ, 100). His achievement grade equivalents on the PIAT were 1.8 on reading recognition and 3.2 on mathematics. On the WISC-R, Smith obtained an IQ of 96 (Verbal IQ, 103; Performance IQ, 88). His achievement grade equivalents on the PIAT were 1.3 on reading recognition and 1.1 on mathematics.

Volume 6. Spring 1983 231



REPORTS

Task and Scoring System The subjects' daily resource room assignment

during each phase of the study was to write six lower-case manuscript letters five times. The order in which the letters were written was ran- domized daily. The letters consisted of two training letters (g, a) and four generalization letters (p, q, o, e). Subjects did not receive training on any of the generalization letters during the experiment.

Each letter printed by a subject was rated on a 5-point letter formation scale, ranging from 1 (il- legible) to 5 (very legible). For each letter, judges were provided with model letters which ex- emplified scores of 1, 3, and 5. In assigning ratings, judges were told that letter formation was the primary consideration. Slant, spacing, line quality, size, and alignment were important only if they contributed to or distracted from overall letter formation. Prior to this study, the judges rated other handwriting samples during a series of training sessions. Furthermore, they were blind to the purpose of the study and the condition under which each letter was written.

The dependent variables consisted of the sum total of the five ratings of each of the six lower- case manuscript letters. The same person, a doctoral candidate in special education with prior experience in teaching and evaluating handwriting, rated the daily assignments throughout the investigation. At the end of the experiment, she rescored 27% of the daily assignments and obtained an intrarater reliability coefficient of .88 for all rescored letters. In addition, 27% of the daily assignments were rescored by a second judge, an undergraduate psychology major with no prior training or experience in teaching or evaluating handwriting. The interrater reliability coefficient for the two judges' ratings was .76. Experimental Design

Since the behaviors under study were not con- sidered to be reversible, a multiple-baseline- across-subjects design was utilized. The study consisted of three phases (A, B, C), with the A phases being baseline and the B and C phases representing different types of treatment. Data were collected daily in the three resource rooms

for a total of 38 days during which time handwriting instruction in the regular classroom was suspended. Six weeks after the completion of Phase C, a followup was obtained for all subjects. In addition, two of the subjects completed a series of regular classroom probes.

Baseline. During the baseline conditions, subjects sat next to the experimenter. At the beginning of each session, subjects were given a number 2 pencil and two specially designed writing sheets. They were then directed to write the training letters. At no time did the experimenter give any feedback on the quality of the handwriting samples. Baseline continued until a subject's score on the two letters stabilized or began to decrease.

Treatment. Treatment during the B phase lasted 10 days. At the start of this condition, subjects were told that they would learn a procedure designed to improve their handwriting. The procedure was directed at teaching the formation of the training letter g:

Step 1 -"I want you to watch closely as I write the letter g." After writing the letter, the examiner and the student discussed the formation of the letter (i.e., the examiner described the act first, followed by the student). The letter was written and discussed three times. Step 2-The examiner wrote the letter while verbally describing the process. For the letter g the examiner said, "Start at the middle line; go around, down to the bottom line; back up to the beginning; retrace down; and go half a line below the bottom line and hook to the left." The procedure was continued until the student could verbalize the steps in unison with the examiner. Step 3-The examiner wrote the letter. Next, the student traced the letter with his/her index finger while the examiner and the student verbally described the process in unison. This procedure was continued until the student could simultaneously trace the letter and self- verbalize the steps. Step 4-The examiner first wrote the letter and then traced it with a pencil while simultaneously defining the task (i.e., "What

232 Learning Disability Quarterly



REPORTS

do I have to do? I have to write the letter g"), verbally directing the process, correcting errors as they occurred (e.g., "No, that's not on the midline"), and self-reinforcing (i.e., "There, it's done and I made a good letter"). The examiner modeled this procedure both with and without errors. The procedure was continued until the student could successfully imitate the process. Step 5-The examiner wrote the letter. The student copied the letter while simultaneously defining the task, verbally directing the process, correcting errors as they occurred, and self-reinforcing. This procedure was continued until the student could successfully complete the process three times consecutively. Step 6-The examiner verbally described the formation of the letter while the student simultaneously wrote it. This procedure was repeated until the student could successfully write the letter three times from memory. Treatment during the C phase also lasted 10

days. The only difference between phases B and C was that the procedure used in the latter was directed at teaching the formation of the training letter a. The verbal description for writing the letter, a, was: "Start at the middle line; go around, down to the bottom line; back up to the beginning; retrace down to the bottom line."

Prior to the study, the examiner had received considerable training and practice in implement- ing the treatment procedures. To insure that the examiner applied the procedure correctly during phase B and C, six of the sessions were tape- recorded. Although subjects were allowed some flexibility in developing individual patterns of self-instruction, analysis of the tapes indicated that the examiner was consistent in correctly ap- plying the procedure.

Followup. Six weeks after phase C was ter- minated, a one-day followup probe was conducted. Followup sessions were identical to baseline conditions except that the daily assignment was collected at each subject's place of residence.

Regular classroom probes. In addition, two of the subjects' regular classroom teachers

agreed to collect two probes (on consecutive days) during each phase of the study. For each probe, the regular teachers instructed the subjects (Michael and Valentine) to write the training letters five times each.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The treatment procedure proved to be

moderately effective. In general, each subject's performance on the letter targeted for treatment during a particular phase of the study improved by an increment of 1 point on a 5-point letter formation scale. Further strengthening the reliability of this effect was the finding that lagging treatments B and C for each subject in a multiple-baseline fashion resulted in the ap- propriate delay in improvement of the formation of the two training letters. In addition, the six- week followup revealed that gains procured during treatment were maintained over time.

Generalization was assessed by examining the subjects' performance on both trained and untrained letters. Specifically, treatment designed to improve a subject's performance on a particular training letter did not appear to substan- tially affect performance on the other training letter. Similarly, performance on regular classroom probes was equal to or lower than baseline scores. Lastly, each subject evidenced a slight gain (approximately one-half of a point) on most of the untrained generalization letters.

To summarize, the present study replicates that of Robin et al. (1975) by showing that a self- instructional procedure can bring about a signifi- cant change in students' handwriting performance within an applied setting. Nonetheless, several anomalies undermine the strength of this conclusion. First, application of the treatment procedure was not cost effective. Despite approximately five hours of intense, individualized instruction, each subject made only moderate improvement in controlling two responses already within their repertoire. Second, treatment resulted in effects which were primarily situation specific. For example, improvements which occurred in the resource room did not appear to generalize to the regular classroom.

Volume 6, Spring 1983 233



REPORTS

Third, even though subjects had received prior handwriting instruction and were older than the students in the Robin et al. (1975) investigation, the examiner still had difficulty shaping and maintaining subjects' verbalizations and/or self- instructional responses.

At least three factors may have influenced the outcome of the study. One, the selected procedures and the training content may have af- fected subjects' performance on the dependent measures. For instance, the treatment procedure may have been too complex, requiring subjects to learn too many steps and/or use too many self-guiding comments. This would, in part, ac- count for the difficulty subjects encountered in mastering the procedure. Two, the number and duration of training sessions may have been in- adequate (see Harris, 1981, 1982). Three, the use of overt self-guiding comments may have had a negative effect on the subjects' motoric response in that self-verbalizations may interfere with performance on academic tasks which re- quire automaticity.

REFERENCES Graham, S., & Madan, A. Teaching letter formation.

Academic Therapy, 1981, 16, 389-396. Graham, S., & Miller, L. Handwriting research and

practice: A unified approach. Focus on Exceptional Children, 1980, 13, 1-16.

Harris, K. The effects of cognitive training on self- speech and task performance during problem solv- ing among learning disabled and normally achieving children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Auburn University, 1981.

Harris, K. Cognitive behavior modification: Applica- tion with exceptional students. Focus on Excep- tional Children, 1982, 15, 1-16.

Robin, A., Armel, S., & O'Leary, K. The effects of self-instruction on writing deficiencies. Behavior Therapy, 1975, 6, 178-187.

STEVE GRAHAM, Ed.D., is Assistant Pro-

fessor, Dept. of Special Education, University of Maryland.

Requests for reprints or a full-length report, including tables and graphs, should be addressed to: Steve Graham, Dept. of Special Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Note: The LDQ receives many more manuscripts of interest and worth than space permits publishing in full. This department, REPORTS, will present shortened versions of some articles as recommended by consulting editors.

Authors have agreed to furnish interested readers with full copies of the papers if re- quested. The full-length article must have been submitted for review and the author(s) will prepare the REPORTS.

234 Learning Disability Quarterly



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The Effect of Self-Instructional Procedures on LD Students' Handwriting Performance