Archives: Dyslexia

Dyslexia Intervention

CDBC/BCAAN Educational bite: Originally emailed March 13, 2024

Targeted reading interventions improve word reading and spelling: A recent meta-analysis of 53 reading interventions targeting foundational skills for children at risk or with dyslexia show a significant, positive effect on norm-referenced reading outcomes. Dosage (higher=slightly larger effect sizes) and outcome domain (spelling and word reading were more impacted than reading comprehension) were important moderators (Hall et al., 2023). “Mean effects of interventions delivered earlier (in Grades K-2) were not statistically significantly larger than effects of interventions delivered later (in Grades 3–5). Descriptively speaking, though, studies with students in Grades 3–5 were associated with smaller effects (g = 0.16) than studies with students in Grades K-2 (g = 0.36).”

Phonological awareness can be directly taught through instruction: As suggested in the National Panel on Reading (2020), phonological and phonemic awareness instruction are important components of preventing and treating dyslexia. This intervention continues to be well supported as being able to be trained through intervention (Rehfeld et al., 2022). Phonological awareness training must be paired with high quality targeted reading intervention.

Music training may play a role in helping those with dyslexia: A prospective study published in PLoS One (Flaugnacco et al., 2015) suggested that music training can improve phonological awareness and reading in children with dyslexia, presumably due to an underlying poor temporal perception which is improved through training.

Treatments without research support

Neurofeedback: There is not sufficient research to support EEG neurofeedback as an intervention for reading (Othman et al., 2020).

Vision therapy: According to a joint statement which included the American Academy of Pediatrics, section on Ophthalmology “Convergence insufficiency and poor accommodation, both of which are uncommon in children, can interfere with the physical act of reading but not with decoding. Thus, treatment of these disorders can make reading more comfortable and may allow reading for longer periods of time but does not directly improve decoding or comprehension.” Overall, while vision therapy can help individuals with convergence insufficiency, it is not accepted as an appropriate treatment to improve reading, either directly or indirectly (initially published in 2009, and re-affirmed in 2014).

References

American Academy of Pediatrics, Section on Ophthalmology, Council on Children with Disabilities, American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, & American Association of Certified Orthoptists (2009). Joint statement–Learning disabilities, dyslexia, and vision. Pediatrics, 124(2), 837–844. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-1445

Flaugnacco, E., Lopez, L., Terribili, C., Montico, M., Zoia, S., & Schön, D. (2015). Music Training Increases Phonological Awareness and Reading Skills in Developmental Dyslexia: A Randomized Control Trial. PloS one, 10(9), e0138715. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138715

Hall, C., Dahl‐Leonard, K., Cho, E., Solari, E. J., Capin, P., Conner, C. L., Henry, A. R., Cook, L., Hayes, L., Vargas, I., Richmond, C. L., & Kehoe, K. F. (2023). Forty years of reading intervention research for elementary students with or at risk for dyslexia: A systematic review and Meta‐Analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(2), 285-312. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.477

Othman, E. S., Faye, I., Sundaram Muthuvalu, M., & Naufal Mohamad Saad, M. (2020). EEG neurofeedback for dyslexia treatment: Limitations and future directions. Journal of Physics. Conference Series, 1497(1), 12028. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1497/1/012028

National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read : an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction, https://www.nichd.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pubs/nrp/Documents/report.pdf

Vimont, C. (2017). Vision Training Not Proven to Make Vision Sharper, American Academy of Ophthalmology, https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/vision-training-not-proven-to-make-vision-sharper

The science of literacy – Recommended reading

CDBC/BCAAN Research Bite: Originally emailed February 9, 2024

Book recommendation: Language at the Speed of Sight. The author, Mark Seidenberg, is a major advocate for translating the science of reading into education. He explains things such as the science behind the “Cambridge hoax” where we can easily read words with mixed up letters. Try some of his reading demos. Listen to Seidenberg talk about the science of reading in a video on his website. A couple of important points:

  1. Language development is essential for reading development.
  2. Explicit instruction is necessary to scaffold reading, but implicit learning plays an important role, and implicit learning speeds up the process of learning to read.
  3. Phonemic awareness develops in conjunction with learning about print; it is a result of being a skilled reader, not a precursor. He details this here,  also available in a recording.
  4.  To show the impact of reading on phonological awareness, he points to research which shows that when asked to say “sword” without the “s” good readers often say “word.” He makes the point that phonological awareness training should be paired with print/letters.

For more high quality information on the science of reading, check out – Reading Rockets: “A national public media literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.”