Do you have 6 or more children with ASD at your school aged 8-13?
Would your school like to participate in some psychology research?
Want to explore how explicit vocabulary instruction impacts on learning and recall for children with and without autism at your school?
Have you wondered if quality of children's sleep impacts on learning?
Our research at the
Sleep, Language and Memory Lab at the University of York has shown that sleep is crucial for learning language, but for children with autism both sleep and language learning can be compromised. We've shown that children with autism sometimes have difficulties
remembering new words over multiple nights of sleep. However, explicit vocabulary instruction holds promise for teaching and learning in this population. Here, we want to test whether vocabulary instruction for new words using a lesson sequence: teach, practise,
apply and revise, particularly when combined with bedtime prompts, might support language learning in children with and without autism. The vocabulary instruction lesson is designed using key recommendations from the EEF guidance reports on literacy, practical
games from the Fischer Family Trust Word Power course and feedback from the current
school survey completed by teachers.
This experimental design pilot study is part of the Sleeping on Vocabulary project, which aims to test if explicit vocabulary instruction helps children learn new vocabulary and if a sleep prompt for the new words helps to consolidate semantic learning the
next day and one month later.
If you are interested in vocabulary instruction and would like to participate but only have 2 or 3 children with ASD aged 8-13, this still might be possible. The pilot project runs from January to May 2020.
Please contact Karen Vaughan for a discussion about this can work in your school. kv606@york.ac.uk