| The current literature suggests that cognitive assessment can be used to drive intervention selection and encourages researchers to establish empirical links between cognitive ability/processing and intervention (Braden & Kratochwill, 1997). Past research has established a clear link between cognitive ability and academic achievement; however, research is needed to establish empirically-supported matches between cognitive ability and educational practice (Braden, 1997; Hale & Fiorello, 2004; McGrew & Flanagan, 1998; Mather & Wendling, 2005). It was hypothesized that second graders with ability weaknesses in the areas of auditory processing or crystallized ability would match with a remedial intervention and that second graders with ability strengths in those same areas would not match with the remedial intervention. Treatment integrity data were used to support the link between ability and intervention by demonstrating that the intervention was administered as intended in terms of adherence and dose. Because the screening data did not identify any participants eligible for the auditory processing experiment, only one single-subject experiment was implemented. The single-subject experiment examined whether a match between acquired knowledge ability and intervention could be made. The study was divided into two phases: (a) Phase I, Baseline; and (b) Phase II, application of acquired knowledge intervention and application of weekly progress-monitoring. Four types of data were collected across the two phases: screening data for ability area; progress monitoring of each instructional session; weekly progress monitoring data; and treatment integrity data. Overall, the data indicate that vocabulary growth occurred in participants with acquired knowledge deficits but that a match between acquired knowledge ability and intervention could not be supported. |
