The Effectiveness of Interventions for Developmental Dyslexia: Rhythmic Reading Training Compared With Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation and Action Video Games

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia is a very common learning disorder causing an impairment in reading ability. Although the core deficit underlying dyslexia is still under debate, significant agreement is reached in the literature that dyslexia is related to a specific deficit in the phonological representation of speech sounds. Many studies also reported an association between reading skills and music. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing basic auditory skills of children with DD may impact reading abilities. However, music education alone failed to produce improvements in reading skills comparable to those resulting from traditional intervention methods for DD. Therefore, a computer-assisted intervention method, called Rhythmic Reading Training (RRT), which combines sublexical reading exercises with rhythm processing, was implemented. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of RRT and that of an intervention resulting from the combination of two yet validated treatments for dyslexia, namely, Bakker's Visual Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation (VHSS) and the Action Video Game Training (AVG). Both interventions, administered for 13 h over 9 days, significantly improved reading speed and accuracy of a group of Italian students with dyslexia aged 8-14. However, each intervention program produced improvements that were more evident in specific reading parameters: RRT was more effective for improvement of pseudoword reading speed, whereas VHSS + AVG was more effective in increasing general reading accuracy. Such different effects were found to be associated with different cognitive mechanisms, namely, phonological awareness for RRT and rapid automatized naming for VHSS + AVG, thus explaining the specific contribution of each training approach. Clinical Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02791841.

Remote learning among students with and without reading difficulties during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Individuals without a formal diagnosis of dyslexia may have not obtained it at the elementary-school level because of a mild severity of their problems and the failure to meet all diagnostic criteria. The formal diagnosis of dyslexia may be a reason for seeking reading comprehension therapy, which may be beneficial to the compensating strategies for dyslexic problems (Cancer et al, 2020;Galuschka et al, 2014Galuschka et al, , 2020Pape-Neumann et al, 2015). People who did not have a formal diagnosis but feel they experience difficulties might be therefore disadvantaged by the fact that they did not receive treatment in the past.…”

Visual Attentional Training Improves Reading Capabilities in Children with Dyslexia: An Eye Tracker Study During a Reading Task

“…More recently, Cancer et al [ 30 ] compared in a small group of dyslexic children (n = 12) the effect of rhythmic reading training (RRT) on reading speed and accuracy with respect to those of two training types already validated (i.e., Bakker’s visual hemisphere-specific stimulation and the action video game training). Both training types were administrated for 13 h over nine days.…”

Cognitive Processes Underlying Reading Improvement during a Rhythm-Based Intervention. A Small-Scale Investigation of Italian Children with Dyslexia

“…The success of the intervention was not dependent on setting or the musical expertise of participants [15]. Moreover, the efficacy of the RRT was found to be comparable to that of other validated, multimodal approaches [15,17]. Comparative analyses showed that the RRT tended to produce greater effects on reading speed than on reading accuracy.…”