The Effects of Self-Monitoring of Story Elements on the Reading Comprehension of High School Seniors with Learning Disabilities

This study used a multiple baseline across participants design to examine the effects of self-monitoring and active responding on the reading comprehension of three high school seniors with learning disabilities and significant attention problems. The self-monitoring intervention required the participants to read a story and stop reading at three pre-determined places in the text. At each stopping point, the participants used a form to record the answers to five questions focusing on narrative story elements (e.g., Who are the main characters? What is the setting?). Reading comprehension was measured by (a) number of story facts the participants were able to recall and (b) number of correct responses on a 10-item reading comprehension quiz. Findings demonstrated a functional relation between the self-monitoring intervention and reading comprehension performance.