Treatment of Developmental Reading Disorders: A Visual Attention Span Deficit Approach

<p>A current theory of the cognitive underpinnings of developmental reading disorders supposes that two impairments contribute to the overall profile of disordered reading: one of phonological awareness and one of visual attention span. The severity of each impairment is different for each child. By identifying children that display a severe degree of one impairment, but a limited degree of the other, each impairment can be investigated. The current study identified one participant with a stronger phonological impairment, and one with a stronger impairment of visual attention span. They completed two training programs: one program tailored to improve phonology, and one tailored to improve visual span. Both treatments improved reading performance in both participants. It was expected that the treatment targeting each participant‟s particular cognitive impairment would prove more effective for that participant. However, both treatments were found to show similar levels of improvement with both participants.</p>

Treatment of Developmental Reading Disorders: A Visual Attention Span Deficit Approach

<p>A current theory of the cognitive underpinnings of developmental reading disorders supposes that two impairments contribute to the overall profile of disordered reading: one of phonological awareness and one of visual attention span. The severity of each impairment is different for each child. By identifying children that display a severe degree of one impairment, but a limited degree of the other, each impairment can be investigated. The current study identified one participant with a stronger phonological impairment, and one with a stronger impairment of visual attention span. They completed two training programs: one program tailored to improve phonology, and one tailored to improve visual span. Both treatments improved reading performance in both participants. It was expected that the treatment targeting each participant‟s particular cognitive impairment would prove more effective for that participant. However, both treatments were found to show similar levels of improvement with both participants.</p>

Comparison of Effectiveness of Phonological and Whole-Word Treatment Programmes within Two Dyslexia Subtypes

<p>This thesis compares the effectiveness of two reading treatment programmes, each developed to address the key difficulties of two subtypes of developmental dyslexia - phonological and surface dyslexia, respectively. Previous cognitive neuropsychological research has commonly administered a single tailored treatment programme to each individual. However, this research administers both programmes to individuals from each subtype, and compares their effectiveness. In Experiment 1, a large group of reading-delayed children was screened, and, using Coltheart and Leahy's (1996) criteria, three children were identified as surface dyslexic and seven as phonological dyslexic. All were aged between 9 and 13 years. Following completion of a range of background tests to assess cognitive abilities potentially correlated with dyslexia, each child received two treatment programmes: 1) a phonologically-based programme training grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (based on Broom and Doctor, 1995b) and 2) a whole-word programme (specifically designed for the current research), with pre- and post-tests throughout. Results indicated that all children significantly improved their reading of the trained words following both training programmes, regardless of subtype. For both subtypes, generalisation to untrained words was observed following the Phonological Programme, but not the Whole-word Programme. In Experiment 2, a second, more case-based investigation was conducted, focussing on one phonological dyslexic and one surface dyslexic, who were selected following extensive screening. Both were aged 10 years 11 months. Experiment 2 also examined the effectiveness of specific whole-word techniques. Results indicated a clear distinction between the responsiveness of the two participants, with each favouring their target treatment programme: the Phonological Programme was more effective for the phonological dyslexic than the Whole-word Programme, and vice versa for the surface dyslexic. The implications are discussed, with particular reference to suggestions for remediating reading disorders.</p>

Comparison of Effectiveness of Phonological and Whole-Word Treatment Programmes within Two Dyslexia Subtypes

<p>This thesis compares the effectiveness of two reading treatment programmes, each developed to address the key difficulties of two subtypes of developmental dyslexia - phonological and surface dyslexia, respectively. Previous cognitive neuropsychological research has commonly administered a single tailored treatment programme to each individual. However, this research administers both programmes to individuals from each subtype, and compares their effectiveness. In Experiment 1, a large group of reading-delayed children was screened, and, using Coltheart and Leahy's (1996) criteria, three children were identified as surface dyslexic and seven as phonological dyslexic. All were aged between 9 and 13 years. Following completion of a range of background tests to assess cognitive abilities potentially correlated with dyslexia, each child received two treatment programmes: 1) a phonologically-based programme training grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (based on Broom and Doctor, 1995b) and 2) a whole-word programme (specifically designed for the current research), with pre- and post-tests throughout. Results indicated that all children significantly improved their reading of the trained words following both training programmes, regardless of subtype. For both subtypes, generalisation to untrained words was observed following the Phonological Programme, but not the Whole-word Programme. In Experiment 2, a second, more case-based investigation was conducted, focussing on one phonological dyslexic and one surface dyslexic, who were selected following extensive screening. Both were aged 10 years 11 months. Experiment 2 also examined the effectiveness of specific whole-word techniques. Results indicated a clear distinction between the responsiveness of the two participants, with each favouring their target treatment programme: the Phonological Programme was more effective for the phonological dyslexic than the Whole-word Programme, and vice versa for the surface dyslexic. The implications are discussed, with particular reference to suggestions for remediating reading disorders.</p>

Development and Implementation of an Integrated Academic-Behavior Intervention

The relationship between learning disabilities and behavior disorders is well documented and has led to the development of integrated interventions that target both academic and behavior deficits in elementary students. This paper describes the rationale, development, and implementation of an integrated academic-behavior intervention called a cademic and behavior combined support ( ABC Support). The intervention was developed by integrating the critical intervention elements from two single-focus interventions (i.e., repeated reading and check-in/check-out) into a single comprehensive intervention designed to improve reading fluency for early elementary students with reading disorders while also strengthening their engagement and compliance with behavior expectations.

Single-trial FRPs: A Machine Learning Approach Towards the Study of the Neural Underpinning of Reading Disorders

Understanding the neural underpinning of reading disorders, such as dyslexia, is a fundamental question in developmental neuroscience. However, identifying and isolating informative neural components elicited during free-naming paradigms (i.e. unprompted and unconstrained naming tasks) has proven a challenging methodological task. These methodological barriers have hindered the study of the neural underpinnings of reading disorders. In this paper, we proposed a machine learning approach for detecting neural components during free-naming, overcoming much of the current methodological challenges. We propose a new neural-based metric to differentiate groups of children with dyslexia (DYS) and their chronological age controls (CAC) in a free-naming task. Our approach combines electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking measures to generate single-trial fixation-related potentials (sFRPs) and formulate an optimization problem to extract naming-related neural components, informative of group differences. Our approach is validated on a real dataset involving children with dyslexia and CAC performing a Rapid-Automatized Naming (RAN) task. Our results demonstrate the validity of the proposed metric as an indicator of the neural-based markers of reading disorders. Importantly, our proposed framework provides a novel approach that can facilitate the study of neural correlates of reading disorders under paradigms current methods are unable to.

Supporting Acquisition of Spelling Skills in Different Orthographies Using an Empirically Validated Digital Learning Environment

This paper discusses how the association learning principle works for supporting acquisition of basic spelling and reading skills using digital game-based learning environment with the Finland-based GraphoLearn (GL) technology. This program has been designed and validated to work with early readers of different alphabetic writing systems using repetition and reinforcing connections between spoken and written units. Initially GL was developed and found effective in training children at risk of reading disorders in Finland. Today GL training has been shown to support learning decoding skills among children independent of whether they face difficulties resulting from educational, social, or biological reasons.

The Relation between Physiological Parameters and Colour Modifications in Text Background and Overlay during Reading in Children with and without Dyslexia

Reading is one of the essential processes during the maturation of an individual. It is estimated that 5-10% of school-age children are affected by dyslexia, the reading disorder characterised by difficulties in the accuracy or fluency of word recognition. There are many studies which have reported that colour overlays and background could improve the reading process, especially in children with reading disorders. As dyslexia has neurobiological origins, the aim of the present research was to understand the relationship between physiological parameters and colour modifications in the text and background during reading in children with and without dyslexia. We have measured differences in electroencephalography (EEG), heart rate variability (HRV), electrodermal activities (EDA), and eye movement of the 36 school-age children (18 with dyslexia and 18 of control group) during the reading performance in 13 combinations of background and overlay colours during the reading task. Our findings showed that the dyslexic children have longer reading duration, fixation count, fixation duration average, fixation duration total, and longer saccade count, saccade duration total, and saccade duration average while reading on white and coloured background/overlay. It was found that the turquoise, turquoise O, and yellow colours are beneficial for dyslexic readers, as they achieved the shortest time duration during the reading tasks when these colours were used. Also, dyslexic children have higher values of beta and the whole range of EEG while reading in particular colour (purple), as well as increasing theta range while reading on the purple overlay colour. We have observed no significant differences between HRV parameters on white colour, except for single colours (purple, turquoise overlay and yellow overlay) where the control group showed higher values for Mean HR, while dyslexic children scored higher with Mean RR. Regarding EDA measure we have found systematically lower values in children with dyslexia in comparison to the control group. Based on present results we can conclude that both colours (warm and cold background/overlays) are beneficial for both groups of readers and all sensor modalities could be used to better understand the neurophysiological origins in dyslexic children.