Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills to a Child with Autism Using Behaviour Skills Training.

One middle-school student with autism received Behavioral Skills Training. The team taught four reading moves: predict, question, clarify, and summarize.

They used a multiple-baseline design across the four skills. Each skill got its own teaching block until the student hit mastery.

BST created big jumps in every skill. The student kept the gains six weeks later and scored higher on overall reading tests.

Teaching the four moves together lifted general comprehension, not just the trained parts.

The result lines up with Sievert et al. (1988) and Taras et al. (1993). All three used the same BST steps and multiple-baseline design, just with different targets: legal self-advocacy and daily living skills.

Berube et al. (2021) and Stannis et al. (2019) add a twist. They also start with BST, but add in-situ training when learners stall. D et al. did not need that extra step, likely because reading practice is easier to arrange than real-life stranger or bullying drills.

Omori et al. (2022) seems to disagree. They say break text into short segments, not teach four meta-cognitive moves. The studies do not really clash; segmenting helps decoding while BST boosts understanding. You could blend both.

If you run reading sessions with autistic learners, swap your usual prompting for a quick BST round: model the four moves, have the learner rehearse, give praise and correction, then repeat. One middle-schooler mastered all skills in a few short sessions and held onto them. Try it next time you open a storybook or a science passage.