Effects of Picture Fading on Two Learning Disabled Students' Sight Word Acquisition

Picture-fading methods previously demonstrated to be effective with moderately and severely retarded individuals were used to teach 12 sight words to two learning disabled students. Although previous studies clearly showed picture fading to be superior to stimulus change and standard paired-associate procedures, such studies employed expensive apparatus. The results of the present study indicated that fading the pictures of picture-word pairs using tracing paper was effective in teaching three lists of four words to two students who were receiving half-day services in an elementary resource room. Followup results indicated that although long-term retention was adequate, several confounding subject and task variables might have accounted for inconsistent followup performances by both students.