The effectiveness of the SESFAR Phonological Awareness Intervention Program in supporting the phonological awareness skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this research was to determine the effectiveness of SESFAR [Phonologic Awareness] Intervention Program (Akdal and Kargın, 2019) in supporting the phonological awareness skills of children with a autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For this purpose, the effectiveness of the SESFAR phonological awareness intervention program in the development of the phonological awareness skills of two 6 an 7 years old children with ASD, which consists of separating sentences into words, separating words into syllables, rhyme awareness and combining syllables, was examined. In addition, if students acquire phonological awareness skills, follow-up data on maintaining these skills after 1, 3 and 5 weeks, and generalization data on displaying these skills in different people, tools and environments were obtained. Social validity data of the research were determined by social comparison and subjective evaluation method. The findings obtained from the study show that children with ASD acquire their phonological awareness skills with SESFAR, which is presented with the direct instruction method, they continue in the follow-up sessions held after 1, 3 and 5 weeks, and they can generalize to different people, tools and environments. Social validity findings, on the other hand, showed that the children with ASD, who were the participants of the study, exhibited phonological awareness skills at a similar level to their peers; The findings obtained from the parents and teachers of the participating children show that the research is socially valid.