Abstract
In a previous article, Moore, Rosenberg and Coleman (Brain and Language, 2005, 94, 72-85) reported evidence for significant improvements in phonological awareness in mainstream children following 6 h of exposure to a commercially available phoneme discrimination training programme, but not in a control group. In a follow-up study, we failed to replicate this finding, despite using an almost identical training programme (Halliday, Taylor, Millward, & Moore, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2012, 55, 168-181). This paper directly compares the methods and the results of the two studies, in an effort to explain the discrepant findings. It reports that the trained group in Moore et al. (2005) showed significantly greater improvements in phonological awareness following training than the trained group in Halliday et al. (2012). However, the control group in Halliday et al. (2012) showed significantly greater improvements in phonological awareness than the control group in Moore et al. (2005). The paper concludes that differences in the randomization, blinding, experimenter familiarity and treatment of trained and control groups contributed to the different outcomes of the two studies. The results indicate that a plethora of factors can contribute to training effects and highlight the importance of well-designed randomized controlled trials in assessing the efficacy of a given intervention. © 2014 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Highlights
With the advent of learning technologies, the fledgling field of ‘educational neuroscience’ is fast becoming a cornerstone of educational policy and practice
The analyses reported in the previous texts directly compared the methods and results of the studies of Moore et al (2005) and Halliday et al (2012) in an effort to explain their discrepant findings
Consistent with the original papers, reanalysis of the data found that the phoneme discrimination (PD) group in the study of Moore et al (2005) showed significantly greater improvements in Rhyme and Spoonerisms following training compared with NI controls
Summary
With the advent of learning technologies, the fledgling field of ‘educational neuroscience’ is fast becoming a cornerstone of educational policy and practice. Group should be used, to assess maturational changes that might occur during the intervention, as well as test–retest/practice effects. It is preferable to include one or more control intervention groups, who receive broadly similar amounts of attention and spend similar amounts of time on task. This allows researchers to assess whether a particular intervention is more effective than giving a child more attention (e.g. the ‘Hawthorne effect’) or raising their expectations In order to minimize expectancy effects, it is preferable for both the experimenter and the child to be blind to the intervention received. Educators are often left with the challenge of trying to disentangle changes in behaviour arising from a given intervention from those arising from methodological inadequacies in a study’s design
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