The Role of Conditioned Seeing on Reading Outcomes for Students in Kindergarten through Second Grade

In 2 experiments, I investigated the role of conditioned seeing on incidental bidirectional naming (Inc-BiN) for unfamiliar stimuli and reading achievement. In Experiment 1, I investigated the correlation, associations, and differences between conditioned seeing, Inc-BiN, and measures of reading achievement for 49 participants in kindergarten through second grade. Unfamiliar visual stimuli were presented with spoken words during a naming experience and participants’ stimulus control for conditioned seeing was measured by drawing responses in the absence of the target stimuli. Reading achievement measures included Winter and Spring diagnostic scores from the iReady® K-12 Adaptive Reading diagnostic (Curriculum Associates, LLC, 2017). Pearson’s correlation analyses showed that participants’ stimulus control for conditioned seeing was significantly correlated with all measures of reading achievement and the stimulus control for untaught listener responses (Inc-UniN), 𝘳 (47) = .440, 𝑝 = .002, and untaught speaker responses (Inc-BiN), 𝘳 (47) = .384, 𝑝 = .007. A Spearman’s rank correlation test showed that participants’ performance percentile for the iReady® reading diagnostic was also significantly correlated with participants’ stimulus control for conditioned seeing. Lastly, results from the independent sample t-tests showed that there were significant differences in participants’ stimulus control for Inc-UniN and Inc-BiN and reading achievement as a function of low and high stimulus control for conditioned seeing. Experiment 1 established the need to further investigate conditioned seeing and its effects on reading comprehension and Inc-BiN for students in kindergarten through second grade, thus in Experiment 2, I investigated the effects of a multiple exemplar instruction (MEI) across delayed selection and production responses intervention on the establishment of conditioned seeing for 6 kindergarten students. Furthermore, I investigated the effects of the establishment conditioned seeing on reading comprehension, conditioned reinforcement for books without pictures, and Inc-BiN. Results show that the MEI across delayed selection and production responses was effective in establishing conditioned seeing for all participants. Results further show that the establishment of conditioned seeing resulted in increases in measures for reading comprehension and the reinforcement value for books without pictures. Though the establishment of conditioned seeing did not establish Inc-BiN for participants, Experiment 2 demonstrates the need to further investigate the relation between conditioned seeing and Inc-BiN in young readers.