Idea units in notes and summaries for read texts by keyboard and pencil in middle childhood students with specific learning disabilities: Cognitive and brain findings

Abstract

Seven children with dyslexia and/or dysgraphia (2 girls, 5 boys, M=11 years) completed fMRI connectivity scans before and after twelve weekly computerized lessons in strategies for reading source material, taking notes, and writing summaries by touch typing or groovy pencils. During brain scanning they completed two reading comprehension tasks—one involving single sentences and one involving multiple sentences. From before to after intervention, fMRI connectivity magnitude changed significantly during sentence level reading comprehension (from right angular gyrus→right Broca’s) and during text level reading comprehension (from right angular gyrus→cingulate). Proportions of ideas units in children’s writing compared to idea units in source texts did not differ across combinations of reading-writing tasks and modes. Yet, for handwriting/notes, correlations insignificant before the lessons became significant after the strategy instruction between proportion of idea units and brain connectivity at all levels of language in reading comprehension (word-, sentence-, and text) during scanning; but for handwriting/summaries, touch typing/notes, and touch typing/summaries changes in those correlations from insignificant to significant after strategy instruction occurred only at text level reading comprehension during scanning. Thus, handwriting during note-taking may benefit all levels of language during reading comprehension, whereas all other combinations of modes and writing tasks in this exploratory study appear to benefit only the text level of reading comprehension. Neurological and educational significance of the interdisciplinary research findings for integrating reading and writing and future research directions are discussed.

Relationships between Eye Movements during Sentence Reading Comprehension, Word Spelling and Reading, and DTI and fmri Connectivity In Students with and without Dysgraphia or Dyslexia

“…A recent study showed that for students with dyslexia of comparable age as in the current study, computer-presentation of text to be read so that each sentence is presented one word at a time (eliminating the distractibility from other words in a sentence) resulted in better reading comprehension than presenting each sentence one added word at a time (allowing for the possibility of regressions out due to distractibility from other visually displayed words (authors, manuscript in preparation). Also the DTI results of the current study show the relationship of language by hand (writing) and language by eye (reading) for the dysgraphia group, consistent with much cognitive research showing a writing-reading relationship, including the benefits of note taking in handwriting for reading comprehension [ 47 ].…”

Computerized Instruction in Translation Strategies for Students in Upper Elementary and Middle School Grades With Persisting Learning Disabilities in Written Language

“…On the one hand, this finding may be due to reading problems of some but not all of the students with diagnosed specific learning disabilites in transcription by the research team. On the other hand, this finding may be due to lack of prior explicit instruction in strategies of taking notes and writing summaries, which has been shown to be effective for students with specific learning disabilites in written language, including, but not restricted to, transcription disabilities (Richards et al, 2016). That is, explicit strategies in translation at different levels of language may need to be supplemented with explicit strategies with note taking and summary writing to facilitate written summaries in students with specific learning disabilites in transcription.…”

The Functional Neuroanatomy of Reading Intervention

“…Evidence regarding altered functional connectivity following reading intervention suggests that integrating dispersed functional networks facilitates reading improvements in RD ( Perdue et al, 2022 ). Intervention-related neuroplasticity effects were found both during task-based and resting-state fMRI in diverse brain systems including fronto-parietal and cingulo-opercular networks ( Horowitz-Kraus et al, 2015 ; Richards et al, 2016 , 2017 ), and among low-level visual, dorsal attentional, and executive function networks distributed in various brain regions ( Horowitz-Kraus et al, 2019 ).…”