Special Education (Penn State)
asboyle@gmail.com
Background: I taught inclusion prekindergarten as well as elementary resource and inclusion classes in urban schools for six years in Baton Rouge, LA. My learners were young children with varying abilities and disabilities as well as different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. My passion for early childhood and my belief in the importance of inclusion has led me to currently focus on early literacy interventions that can be implemented in an inclusion context.
Current Interests: I am interested in how best to design and evaluate AAC supports and interventions to promote the literacy skills of learners with complex communication needs. In particular, my focus is on providing young children with developmental delays/disabilities rich early literacy experiences that promote the growth of early literacy skills. I am also interested in creating inclusive early literacy activities (e.g., shared reading) that both children with developmental delays and their typically developing peers can participate in and grow as equal partners. My goal is to help make such activities simple and easy to implement by teachers and paraprofessionals in inclusive early childhood classrooms.
Sample Presentation/Publication and Rationale: Boyle, S., Chapin, S., & McNaughton, D. (2016, August). Dialogic reading for children with autism spectrum disorders: A review of AAC needs and interventions. Presentation at the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (ISAAC) Conference, Toronto, Canada [abstract, poster as a pdf] .
Dialogic reading is an intervention that is associated with large gains in expressive vocabulary for typically developing children. However, in this review we found that children with ASD were not being given the AAC supports they may have needed to make similar growth. Thus, I am interested in designing early literacy interventions that include AAC and other supports for young children with developmental delays and disabilities so they can make similar gains as their typically developing peers.
Dissertation Chair: Dr David McNaughton
Additional Information: Suz Boyle ( from AAC.PSU.EDU)
Think Tank Presentation Topic and Discussion Starters
The goal of my project is to investigate the use of “Transition to Literacy” software with young children with developmental disabilities and delays (funded by the RERC on AAC). Preschoolers with developmental delays/disabilities participate in dyads with typically developing peers to read 1-spy books on a tablet. These books are programmed with hotspots that present both written text and spoken word when activated. For example, if a child touches the picture of a duck, they both hear the word “duck” spoken and see the word “duck” dynamically appear on the tablet for three seconds. Based on research on sight word recognition and eye gaze, the hypothesis is that the children will learn to identify target words that are programmed as hotspots.
The children with developmental delays/disabilities also participate in sight word probe sessions. In these sessions, the children are asked to match a sight word card to one of four pictures (i.e., one correct referent and three foils). These sessions can be challenging for both the children and the researcher, as they require sustained attention on a fairly uninteresting task.
My questions are:
- What are some creative ways to sustain interest with young children with short attention spans in assessment activities during research?
- My research requires that preschool teachers are willing to a) follow up with consents sent home with children, b) be comfortable with children being pulled out of the classroom, and c) allow children to read books on the tablet with me during free play. This can be a rather big “ask”. How can we build relationships with teachers and programs so that both the conditions for research are met and the teachers receive direct value from the research being conducted?
- The children in my project are all speaking, although most of them have delays in language development. What could this tell us about the usefulness of AAC interventions for children without complex communication needs but with language and other developmental delays?
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