Refining the experimental analysis of academic skills deficits: Part I. An investigation of variables that affect generalized oral reading performance.

Experimental analyses for improving reading fluency deficits have rarely targeted generalized increases in academic responding. As a consequence, the variables that may help students to generalize newly learned forms of academic responding like reading are not well understood. Furthermore, experimental analyses of reading fluency interventions have not systematically examined difficulty level as a variable that may affect instructional outcomes. The experiment reported in this paper expands (a) the measurement of the dependent variables to include generalized increases across tasks (reading passages) and (b) the combination of independent variables used to produce measurable generalized increases. The results demonstrate the importance of combining reward and instructional variables (including difficulty level) to produce generalized increases and how those variables can be meaningfully investigated prior to making treatment recommendations.