A Rhythmic Musical Intervention for Poor Readers: A Comparison of Efficacy With a Letter‐Based Intervention

There is growing evidence that children with reading difficulties show impaired auditory rhythm perception and impairments in musical beat perception tasks. Rhythmic musical interventions with poorer readers may thus improve rhythmic entrainment and consequently improve reading and phonological skills. Here we compare the effects of a musical intervention for poor readers with a software intervention of known efficacy based on rhyme training and phoneme‐grapheme learning. The research question was whether the musical intervention would produce gains of comparable effect sizes to the phoneme‐grapheme intervention for children who were falling behind in reading development. Broadly, the two interventions had similar benefits for literacy, with large effect sizes.     

Basic auditory processing and developmental dyslexia in Chinese

The present study explores the relationship between basic auditory processing of sound rise time, frequency, duration and intensity, phonological skills (onset-rime and tone awareness, sound blending, RAN, and phonological memory) and reading disability in Chinese. A series of psychometric, literacy, phonological, auditory, and character processing tasks were given to 73 native speakers of Mandarin with an average age of 9.7 years. Twenty-six children had developmental dyslexia, 29 were chronological age-matched controls (CA controls) and 18 were reading-matched controls (RL controls). Chinese children with dyslexia were significantly poorer than CA controls in almost all phonological tasks, in semantic radical search, and in phonological recoding proficiency. Chinese children with dyslexia also showed significant impairments in most of the basic auditory processing tasks. Regression analyses demonstrated that different auditory measures of rise time discrimination were the strongest predictors of individual differences in Chinese character reading (1 Rise task) and phonological recoding (2 Rise task) respectively, with frequency discrimination also important for nonsense syllable decoding. Our results support the hypothesis that accurate perception of the amplitude envelope of speech is critical for phonological development and consequently reading acquisition across languages.     

Early reading development in children at family risk for dyslexia

In a 3-year longitudinal study, middle- to upper-middle-class preschool children at high family risk (HR group, N = 67) and low family risk (LR group, N = 57) for dyslexia (or reading disability, RD), were evaluated yearly from before kindergarten to the end of second grade. Both phonological processing and literacy skills were tested at each of four time points. Consistent with the well-known familiarity of RD, 34% of the HR group compared with 6% of the LR group became RD. Participants who became RD showed deficits in both implicit and explicit phonological processing skills at all four time points, clearly indicating a broader phonological deficit than is often found at older ages. The predictors of literacy skill did not vary by risk group. Both risk groups underwent a similar developmental shift from letter-name knowledge to phoneme awareness as the main predictor of later literacy skill. This shift, however, occurred 2 years later in the HR group. Familial risk was continuous rather than discrete because HR children who did not become RD performed worse than LR non-RD children on some phonological and literacy measures. Finally, later RD could be predicted with moderate accuracy at age 5 years, with the strongest predictor being letter-name knowledge.     

Auditory Processing of Amplitude Envelope Rise Time in Adults Diagnosed With Developmental Dyslexia

Studies of basic (nonspeech) auditory processing in adults thought to have developmental dyslexia have yielded a variety of data. Yet there has been little consensus regarding the explanatory value of auditory processing in accounting for reading difficulties. Recently, however, a number of studies of basic auditory processing in children with developmental dyslexia have suggested that a reduced ability to discriminate the rate of change in amplitude envelope onsets (rise time) may be linked to phonological processing difficulties and thereby to reading difficulties. Here, we select a range of different rise-time tasks used with children, and give them to adults with developmental dyslexia, along with 2 other auditory tasks (intensity discrimination and temporal order judgment). Deficits in both rise-time perception and temporal order judgment were found to predict literacy attainment in adults with developmental dyslexia, but the data were suggestive of different causal pathways.     

Dyslexia heterogeneity: cognitive profiling of Portuguese children with dyslexia

Recent studies have emphasized that developmental dyslexia is a multiple-deficit disorder, in contrast to the traditional single-deficit view. In this context, cognitive profiling of children with dyslexia may be a relevant contribution to this unresolved discussion. The aim of this study was to profile 36 Portuguese children with dyslexia from the 2nd to 5th grade. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group participants according to their phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence abilities. The results suggested a two-cluster solution: a group with poorer performance on phoneme deletion and rapid automatized naming compared with the remaining variables (Cluster 1) and a group characterized by underperforming on the variables most related to phonological processing (phoneme deletion and digit span), but not on rapid automatized naming (Cluster 2). Overall, the results seem more consistent with a hybrid perspective, such as that proposed by Pennington and colleagues (2012), for understanding the heterogeneity of dyslexia. The importance of characterizing the profiles of individuals with dyslexia becomes clear within the context of constructing remediation programs that are specifically targeted and are more effective in terms of intervention outcome.     

Amplitude envelope perception, phonology and prosodic sensitivity in children with developmental dyslexia

Here we explore relations between auditory perception of amplitude envelope structure, prosodic sensitivity, and phonological awareness in a sample of 56 typically-developing children and children with developmental dyslexia. We examine whether rise time sensitivity is linked to prosodic sensitivity, and whether prosodic sensitivity is linked to phonological awareness. Prosodic sensitivity was measured by two reiterant speech tasks modelled on Kitzen (2001). The children with developmental dyslexia were significantly impaired in the reiterant speech tasks and in the phonological awareness tasks (onset and rime awareness). There were significant predictive relations between basic auditory processing of amplitude envelope structure (in particular, rise time), prosodic sensitivity, phonological awareness, reading, and spelling. The auditory processing difficulties that characterise children with developmental dyslexia appear to impair their sensitivity to phrase-level prosodic cues such as metrical structure as well as to phonology, but in this study phonological and prosodic sensitivity made largely independent contributions to reading.     

Cognitive Endophenotypes of Dyslexia

The study investigated cognitive deficits associated with dyslexia and familial risk of dyslexia (endophenotypes) by comparing children from families with and without a history of dyslexia. Eighty-eight school-aged children were assessed on measures of phonology, language and rapid automatized naming. A series of regression analyses with family risk and dyslexia status as predictors indicated that word recall, morphology, and rapid automatized naming were associated with the deficit, whereas the two phonological measures (phoneme awareness and nonword repetition) were associated with both literacy deficits and family risk, suggesting that the phonological deficit is an endophenotype of dyslexia. Whereas the association with familial risk was similar for the two phonological measures, they differed in their relation to dyslexia status: Phoneme awareness showed a stronger association with dyslexia than risk status, whereas nonword repetition was more strongly related to the risk. The data are interpreted within the framework of multiple deficit models of dyslexia.     

Auditory Sensory Processing and Phonological Development in High IQ and Exceptional Readers,Typically Developing Readers,and Children With Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study

Phonological difficulties characterize children with developmental dyslexia across languages, but whether impaired auditory processing underlies these phonological difficulties is debated. Here the causal question is addressed by exploring whether individual differences in sensory processing predict the development of phonological awareness in 86 English-speaking lower- and middle-class children aged 8 years in 2005 who had dyslexia, or were age-matched typically developing children, some with exceptional reading/high IQ. The predictive relations between auditory processing and phonological development are robust for this sample even when phonological awareness at Time 1 (the autoregressor) is controlled. High reading/IQ does not much impact these relations. The data suggest that basic sensory abilities are significant longitudinal predictors of growth in phonological awareness in children.     

Improving early phoneme skills with a computer program: Differential effects of regulatory skills

Research findingsThe study focused on 90 five-year-olds from fifteen Dutch schools. The children scored among the 30% lowest on literacy tests. Half were randomly assigned to a phonological skills program on the computer, the other half to a book program. Both programs consisted of 15 ten-minute sessions. During the phonological skills program children's mouse behavior was registered every tenth of a second. Intelligence, phoneme skills, and regulatory skills were tested. Children scoring average on regulatory skills benefited from teacher-free encounters with the phonological skills program, children scoring low or high did not. Typically, the lowest-scoring children showed more meaningless mouse activity and more random clicking.Practice or policyComputer programs can be used to stimulate early phoneme skills of poorly performing kindergarten children, but not for all children. Children with poor regulatory skills did not benefit from the intervention program.     

Field-Based Evaluation of Two-Tiered Instruction for Enhancing Kindergarten Phonological Awareness

Research Findings: This study reports on the outcomes of a multisite, two-tiered, response-to-intervention instructional model for delivering phonological awareness instruction and intervention to kindergartners. Fifty-seven kindergartners from 3 classrooms participated in a supplemental phonological awareness program, and 56 kindergartners from 3 classrooms received the prevailing school-adopted literacy curriculum. All children in the supplemental condition received supplemental classroom-based phonological awareness instruction in addition to the adopted literacy curriculum. At mid-year, 6 low literacy achievers were identified in each supplemental classroom (n = 18) to participate in an additional 12-week small-group intervention. The classroom-based supplemental curriculum did not produce statistically significant gains for typically achieving children on measures of letter–sound knowledge, word recognition, or developmental spelling. However, an add-on tier of supplemental instruction exerted a substantial advantage for low-achieving children on a measure of developmental spelling. Practice or Policy: Results suggest that a 2-tiered intervention model provides an effective means for improving the literacy outcomes of low-achieving kindergarten children.     

Reading with vocabulary intervention: evaluation of an instruction for children with poor response to reading intervention

Interventions combining phonically based reading instruction with phonological training are generally effective for children with reading (decoding) difficulties. However, a minority of children respond poorly to such interventions. This study explored the characteristics of children who showed poor response to reading intervention and aimed to improve their literacy and language skills via a new theoretically motivated intervention. Twelve 8‐year‐old treatment poor responders with severe and persisting reading difficulties participated. A 9‐week reading intervention incorporating reading, phonological and vocabulary training was implemented. Before the intervention began the children showed almost no progress over 6 months of regular classroom education, on measures of oral language and literacy. Over the intervention period improvements were made on measures of reading, phonological awareness and language skills, which were maintained 6 months later. Although the intervention was effective, it should be noted that most children remained poor readers and require ongoing remediation.     

A comparison of two reading interventions for children with reading disabilities

This study compared the effectiveness of two reading interventions in a public school setting. Forty-five second-grade children with reading disabilities were randomly assigned to a 6-week phonological awareness, word analogy, or math-training program. The two reading interventions differed from each other in (a) the unit of word analysis (phoneme versus onset-rime), (b) the approach to intervention (contextualized versus decontextualized), and (c) the primary domain of reading instruction (oral versus written language). Results indicate that children in both reading programs achieved significant gains in beginning reading skills, learning the specific skills taught in their respective programs, and applying what they had learned to uninstructed material on several transfer-of-learning measures, in comparison to children in the control group. For children in both reading intervention groups, the most significant mediator of growth in oral reading fluency was a child's initial level of word identification skill. Implications of these findings are that systematic, high quality reading intervention can occur in a small group, public school setting and that there are several different paths to the remediation of children with reading disabilities.     

Interventions for dyslexia in Brazil: a scoping review discussed within the perspective of international best practice

ABSTRACT

Reading success has a significant impact on social, academic and vocational engagement. While there have been many advances in Brazilian educational policy, and a reduction in rates of absolute illiteracy, low levels of literacy continue to be a significant area of concern. We aimed to scope the literature to identify the types of intervention researched in Brazil for people with developmental dyslexia; map the findings to international theories of dyslexia and draw on these findings to inform future clinical practice and research. Four databases were searched and a total of 13 studies met eligibility criteria. Four key themes were identified: (1) phonological-based intervention, reading and writing; (2) intervention using computerised technology; (3) auditory processing training and (4) training of visuomotor skills. Whilst most interventions were in keeping with current international theory, a number of methodological issues were identified which, if addressed, would strengthen future research and inform clinical practice in Brazil.     

Issues in the assessment of literacy‐related difficulties across language backgrounds: a cross‐linguistic comparison

This paper focused on the assessment of phonological skills amongst children with developmental dyslexia. Findings from assessments of English and Hungarian monolingual children with and without literacy deficits and bilingual Filipino children with and without literacy deficits in English indicated that performance on phonological‐based tasks often used in dyslexia assessment batteries was influenced by the language background. Monolingual English children with poor literacy skills showed characteristic deficits in most areas of phonological ability, whereas Hungarian counterparts showed little evidence of such difficulties. Bilingual Filipino children with poor English literacy skills showed equivalent profiles to their monolingual counterparts only when assessments in both English and Filipino were considered. The paper discusses difficulties of generalising assessment procedures from one language context to another.     

Auditory and motor rhythm awareness in adults with dyslexia

Children with developmental dyslexia appear to be insensitive to basic auditory cues to speech rhythm and stress. For example, they experience difficulties in processing duration and amplitude envelope onset cues. Here we explored the sensitivity of adults with developmental dyslexia to the same cues. In addition, relations with expressive and receptive rhythm tasks, such as tempi recognition and manual tapping to a metronome, were explored. Our goal was to investigate whether the auditory deficits seen in dyslexia are specific to cues to speech rhythm and stress, or are part of a wider rhythmic awareness problem. A group of 19 undergraduate students with dyslexia were compared with 20 age‐ and ability‐matched controls. The findings confirmed a relationship between auditory rhythm sensitivity and literacy in adults, as well as showing an association with metronome inter‐tap‐interval variability.     

Attendance,performance and the acquisition of early literacy skills: A comparison of Indigenous and non-Indigenous school children

As part of an evaluation of a web-based early literacy intervention, ABRACADABRA, a small exploratory study was conducted over one term in three primary schools in the Northern Territory. Of particular concern was the relationship between attendance and the acquisition of early literacy skills of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Using the GRADE literacy assessment, it was found that students made significant gains in a number of early literacy skills (e.g. phonological awareness skills and vocabulary processing). Classroom attendance was strongly and positively correlated with the acquisition of phonological awareness skills and early literacy skills (e.g. letter recognition, word identification processing). Indigenous children attended class significantly less frequently than non-Indigenous children and performed significantly worse overall, particularly with regard to phonological processing tasks. In light of these findings, it is suggested irregular attendance contributed to the Indigenous students' lowered literacy acquisition.     

Training reading and phoneme awareness skills in children with Down syndrome

The authors report a short-term reading intervention study involving 15 children with Down syndrome (DS) who attended mainstream schools. The intervention programme taught children phoneme segmentation and blending skills in the context of learning letter-sounds and working with words in books. The children were taught by their learning support assistants, who received special training for this purpose. Compared to a waiting group, a group of eight children with DS improved significantly on measures of early literacy skills (letter-sound knowledge, Early Word Recognition) following eight weeks of intervention. The waiting group started to make progress once they received the intervention. Both groups maintained progress on the literacy measures five months after the intervention had finished. The results suggest that children with DS can benefit from structured, phonics-based reading intervention.     

Effects of three interventions on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in grade 2

In a longitudinal intervention study, the effects of three intervention strategies on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2 were analyzed. The interventions consisted of computerized training programs: One bottom-up intervention aimed at improving word decoding skills and phonological abilities, the second intervention focused on top-down processing on the word and sentence levels, and the third was a combination of these two training programs (n = 25 in each group). In addition, there were two comparison groups, 25 children with reading disabilities who received ordinary special instruction and 30 age-matched typical readers. All reading disabled participants completed 25 training sessions with special education teachers. All groups improved their reading skills. The group who received combined training showed higher improvements than the ordinary special instruction group and the typical readers. Different cognitive variables were related to treatment gains for different groups. Thus, a treatment combining bottom-up and top-down aspects of reading was the most effective in general, but individual differences among children need to be considered.     

Auditory frequency discrimination in children with dyslexia

A popular hypothesis holds that developmental dyslexia is caused by phonological processing problems and is therefore linked to difficulties in the analysis of spoken as well as written language. It has been suggested that these phonological deficits might be attributable to low‐level problems in processing the temporal fine structure of auditory cues. Evidence for this has come from studies showing poor performance of dyslexic individuals on measures of auditory frequency discrimination (FD). We compared the FD thresholds of 28 children with dyslexia to 28 age‐matched controls aged 6–13, on a task that minimised demands on short‐term memory. To investigate the mechanisms involved in potential FD deficits, FD thresholds were measured at 1 kHz, where temporal cues were available, and at 6 kHz, where they were not. The dyslexic group had significantly higher FD thresholds than controls in both the 1‐ and 6‐kHz conditions. These findings confirm that children with dyslexia often have poor FD, even when, as in this sample, they have normal language comprehension and expressive vocabulary, and when they are tested using a paradigm that minimises memory demands. However, their perceptual deficit was evident for both the 1‐ and 6‐kHz tones, and so cannot readily be explained in terms of problems in processing temporal fine structure.     

The Relationship Between Phoneme Awareness and Rapid Serial Naming Skills and Literacy Acquisition: The Role of Developmental Period and Reading Ability

This study investigates the relationship between phoneme awareness and rapid naming skills and subsequent reading and spelling ability in two developmental periods: kindergarten to Grade 1 and Grade 1 to Grade 2. Two groups of children participated in the study: children at high and children at low familial risk of developmental dyslexia. The results are consistent with previous findings that both phoneme awareness and rapid naming play an important role in early literacy acquisition in an alphabetic writing system. However, relative to phoneme awareness, rapid naming plays a modest role. In this study, an unambiguous specific effect for rapid naming was found only among the children in the high-risk group. Furthermore, even among these children, the effect of rapid naming was limited to rapid naming of letters and digits and to the second developmental period investigated. The implications of these results for understanding the role played by rapid naming and phoneme awareness in alphabetic literacy acquisition are discussed.