Teaching Math skills to individuals with asd: A descriptive and meta analysis in single subject research designs

Individuals come across math skills during daily life often and these skills also have an important role in teaching other academic skills. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorder have problems in acquiring math skills and they usually experience failure. There is a scarce in research investigating teaching math skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. In addition to that, there is a need to identify the evidence-based practices in teaching math skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. This study was planned to examine single-subject research studies aiming to teach math skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. First, research studies have been evaluated whether they meet the "Quality Indicators for Single-Subject Research" developed by Horner et al (2005). Then, a comprehensive descriptive review has been conducted to examine demographics, procedural variables, and outcomes of the study. Last, effect sizes of these studies have been analyzed to reveal which one could be considered as an evidence-based practice. The researcher conducted a comprehensive electronic and hand literature search from (January) 1980 to (January) 2017 and located 49 research studies aiming to teach math skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Then these studies were reviewed in terms of exclusion and inclusion criteria and 26 research studies have been accepted for further analysis. These studies were examined (a) by using Horner et al.'s (2005) quality indicators to evaluate their methodological quality and find out the studies that meet "acceptable criteria" indicated by them, (b) to conduct a comprehensive analysis on demographics, procedural variables, and outcomes of the studies. In addition to that percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) and Tau-U analysis have been conducted to find out effect sizes of the studies and whether the interventions used for teaching math skills could be accepted as evidence-based practice. Findings have shown 10 out of 26 research studies have met the "acceptable criteria" indicated by Horner et al (2005) and effect size analyses revealed that visual representation and strategy-based interventions could be considered as promising practices for teaching math skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Key Words: Autism spectrum disorder, Mathematics, Single-subject research,Meta-analysis, Evidence-based practices