Improving reading skills in students with dyslexia: the efficacy of a sublexical training with rhythmic background

Abstract

The core deficit underlying developmental dyslexia (DD) has been identified in difficulties in dynamic and rapidly changing auditory information processing, which contribute to the development of impaired phonological representations for words. It has been argued that enhancing basic musical rhythm perception skills in children with DD may have a positive effect on reading abilities because music and language share common mechanisms and thus transfer effects from the former to the latter are expected to occur. A computer-assisted training, called Rhythmic Reading Training (RRT), was designed in which reading exercises are combined with rhythm background. Fourteen junior high school students with DD took part to 9 biweekly individual sessions of 30 min in which RRT was implemented. Reading improvements after the intervention period were compared with ones of a matched control group of 14 students with DD who received no intervention. Results indicated that RRT had a positive effect on both reading speed and accuracy and significant effects were found on short pseudo-words reading speed, long pseudo-words reading speed, high frequency long words reading accuracy, and text reading accuracy. No difference in rhythm perception between the intervention and control group were found. Findings suggest that rhythm facilitates the development of reading skill because of the temporal structure it imposes to word decoding.

tDCS Modulatory Effect on Reading Processes: A Review of Studies on Typical Readers and Individuals With Dyslexia

“…Finally, the protocol of an ongoing study testing the effect of a multiple-session tDCS intervention combined with a cognitive training for DD has been recently reported (Cancer and Antonietti, 2017 ). A sample of undergraduate students with a diagnosis of DD has been involved in an intervention comprising a novel rhythm-based reading training (Bonacina et al, 2015 ; Cancer et al, 2016 ) paired with tDCS for 10 daily sessions over 2 weeks. The left temporo-parietal region was stimulated at a constant current of 1.5 mA for 20 min, and the electrode montage replicated the one used by Costanzo et al ( 2016a ).…”

Music Interventions and Child Development: A Critical Review and Further Directions

“…In contrast, the RCT results of Flaugnacco et al ( 2015 ) [17] showed better performance of the music group on reading skills in comparison to the control group. Using an experimental design, Bonacina et al ( 2015 ) [20] randomly assigned 11–14 year-old children to a computer-assisted, rhythmic reading training (RRT) ( n = 14) or a control group ( n = 14), for which no specific activity addressed to improve reading skills was carried out. Results indicated that RRT had a positive effect on both reading speed and accuracy.…”

Timing anticipation in adults and children with Developmental Dyslexia: evidence of an inefficient mechanism

“…At the same time, another strand of literature has uncovered associations between musical skills-especially aspects related to rhythm-and phonological www.nature.com/scientificreports/ awareness in TD individuals 36,38,[48][49][50] . Individuals with DD have also been reported to benefit from training in sensorimotor synchronization to a pulse delivered by a metronome 51 , and more generally from music training 52 . Previous studies focusing on sensorimotor synchronization showed that the sensorimotor coupling is generally well-preserved in the dyslexic population (though sometimes dyslexics are less precise than controls in tapping), but that neural rhythmic entrainment is atypical in individuals with dyslexia 41,[65][66][67][68] .…”

“…There is also increasing evidence that rhythmic abilities are associated to phonological awareness, an essential precursor of reading 36,38,[48][49][50] . The link between rhythm and phonological awareness emerges also in studies showing that music and rhythmic training improves phonological awareness and reading skills 48,[51][52][53][54][55] . Rhythm facilitates segmentation of the continuous speech into units of different sizes, phrases, words, phonemes and contributes to the recovery of phonological words, as shown in several studies on infants [56][57][58][59][60][61] .…”