Using simultaneous prompting to teach sounds and blending skills to students with moderate intellectual disabilities.
Simultaneous prompting teaches phonics and blending to kids with moderate ID and the skill spreads to new words.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lancioni et al. (2009) worked with three elementary students who have moderate intellectual disability.
The team used simultaneous prompting to teach letter sounds and blending.
Each session gave one prompt right away, then checked for the correct response.
What they found
All three children learned every letter sound and could blend new words.
The kids also read untaught words in new lists, showing the skill carried over.
How this fits with other research
Jones et al. (2010) took the same prompt style and moved from single sounds to full phrases.
Their students with moderate ID later read sentences in real books and community signs.
Klaus et al. (2019) saw mixed results with autistic learners: two kids did fine, one needed a different task.
The mixed finding is not a clash—E’s group had ID only, while Klaus served ASD, showing the prompt works for most but not all.
Why it matters
You can start phonics with simultaneous prompting as early as first grade for students with moderate ID.
Plan for quick generalization: once sounds are firm, jump to untaught words and short books.
If a child stalls, borrow Klaus’s fix—switch to receptive matching first, then return to reading.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Run a 5-trial simultaneous-prompt block for two new letter sounds and test blending with three untaught CVC words in the same session.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of simultaneous prompting on acquisition of letter-sound correspondences and blending skills of previously taught words for three elementary students with moderate intellectual disabilities, and to measure generalization of those skills to untaught words. The three students were first taught to read five nouns using sight-word instruction. After acquisition of the five words the students were taught letter-sound correspondences and to blend the sounds in order to apply word-analysis skills. All the students demonstrated application of letter-sound correspondences and blending skills to read the five sight words and the untaught, generalization words. This study took place across two partial academic school years and therefore provides regression and recoupment data for the students.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2009 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.07.004