Dyslexic Readers Improve without Training When Using a Computer-Guided Reading Strategy

Background: Flawless reading presupposes the ability to simultaneously recognize a sequence of letters, to fixate words at a given location for a given time, to exert eye movements of a given amplitude, and to retrieve phonems rapidly from memory. Poor reading performance may be due to an impairment of at least one of these abilities. Objectives: It was investigated whether reading performance of dyslexic children can be improved by changing the reading strategy without any previous training. Methods: 60 dyslexic German children read a text without and with the help of a computer. A tailored computer program subdivided the text into segments that consisted of no more letters than the children could simultaneously recognize, indicated the location in the segments to which the gaze should be directed, indicated how long the gaze should be directed to each segment, which reading saccades the children should execute, and when the children should pronounce the segments. The computer aided reading was not preceded by any training. Results: It was shown that the rate of reading mistakes dropped immediately by 69.97% if a computer determined the reading process. Computer aided reading reached the highest effect size of Cohen d = 2.649. Conclusions: The results show which abilities are indispensable for reading, that the impairment of at least one of the abilities leads to reading deficiencies that are diagnosed as dyslexia, and that a computer-guided, altered reading strategy immediately reduces the rate of reading mistakes. There was no evidence that dyslexia is due to a lack of eye movement control or reduced visual attention.

Intensifying Reading Instruction for Students With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Practices to Support Classroom Instruction and Family–School Collaboration

Many students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also have reading deficits. These reading deficiencies in students with ADHD are likely to be more severe than those of students with only reading difficulties. To intensify reading instruction to improve reading and behavioral outcomes for students with ADHD, this article describes research-based practices which can be integrated into the classroom reading instruction as well as foster family–school collaboration.

Lexical Frequency Effect on Reading Comprehension and Recall

The present study investigates the effect of lexical difficulty, as measured by frequency, on reading comprehension and recall. It also estimates the relationship between vocabulary size, vocabulary depth, reading comprehension, and recall. To this end, 80 English as a foreign language (EFL) undergraduate university students are administered three standardized instruments including two vocabulary tests and a reading comprehension test. The latter comprises two similar passages (in terms of length and topic) one of which is adjusted by replacing 18% of its words by their low-frequent synonyms, and both passages are estimated lexically to measure their difficulty. Paired samples t-test results show that comprehension and recall are significantly low (p<.001) in the modified passage. This finding further confirms that lexical frequency measure is an effective estimate in determining reading material difficulty. Furthermore, for the second objective, Pearson product-moment analysis reveals a significantly high correlation between size and comprehension, a moderate to low correlation between depth and comprehension, and a moderate correlation between depth and recall tasks. Consequently, the study sugguests estimating the complexity of EFL reading academic material with lexical difficulty measure using frequency criterion to cope with students’ reading deficiencies, and encourage explicit lexical instructions at EFL undergraduate university levels mainly.

A Process Approach to Remediating Word-Decoding Deficiencies in Chapter 1 Children

Difficulties in remediating reading deficiencies in Chapter 1 children have been well documented. Using samples of children from this population, we report the results of two studies employing a recently developed program designed to remediate word-decoding deficiencies. The Process-Based Reading Enhancement Program (PREP) is based on the Luria-Das model of information integration. It involves instruction twice weekly over 14 to 16 weeks. In Study 1, 50 children were randomly selected from a fourth-grade Chapter 1 population. From this group, random assignment was made to experimental and comparison groups ( N=25 in each group). The PREP was administered using a student-teacher ratio of 2 to 1. The Word Attack and Word Identification subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised (WRMT-R) were used as pre- and posttests. For both measures, significant group-by-time interactions were detected. In Study 2, a different sample of 100 Chapter 1 fourth-grade children was randomly divided into remediation and comparison groups (after attrition, Ns=37 and 41, respectively). As in Study 1, all children were pretested and posttested on alternate forms of the Word Attack and Word Identification subtests of the WRMT-R. The time x treatment interactions were significant for both measures. The results of these studies support the efficacy of the PREP to improve word-reading and decoding abilities.

The Social Construction of Reading Lessons: Resistance and Social Reproduction

Classroom observations and interviews with students, their teacher, principal, and former teachers are used to understand how reading lessons and classroom situations more generally were socially constructed during a summer school remedial reading program. The teacher, feeling constrained by what the students' former teachers had ritualistically listed as skill needs, and the upper-middle-class students, feeling that they might get into trouble if they questioned what the teacher assigned and that their parents could help them anyway, seemed to collaborate unwittingly in constructing reading lessons which did not remediate reading deficiencies. These patterns of resistance and accommodation to contradictions in their experience are also seen to help reproduce certain ideological and structural features of an unequal political economy, even while the basis for a fundamental critique is in reach.