Abstract
Children and adolescents with reading disabilities experience a significant impairment in the acquisition of reading and spelling skills. Given the emotional and academic consequences for children with persistent reading disorders, evidence-based interventions are critically needed. The present meta-analysis extracts the results of all available randomized controlled trials. The aims were to determine the effectiveness of different treatment approaches and the impact of various factors on the efficacy of interventions. The literature search for published randomized-controlled trials comprised an electronic search in the databases ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Cochrane, and an examination of bibliographical references. To check for unpublished trials, we searched the websites clinicaltrials.com and ProQuest, and contacted experts in the field. Twenty-two randomized controlled trials with a total of 49 comparisons of experimental and control groups could be included. The comparisons evaluated five reading fluency trainings, three phonemic awareness instructions, three reading comprehension trainings, 29 phonics instructions, three auditory trainings, two medical treatments, and four interventions with coloured overlays or lenses. One trial evaluated the effectiveness of sunflower therapy and another investigated the effectiveness of motor exercises. The results revealed that phonics instruction is not only the most frequently investigated treatment approach, but also the only approach whose efficacy on reading and spelling performance in children and adolescents with reading disabilities is statistically confirmed. The mean effect sizes of the remaining treatment approaches did not reach statistical significance. The present meta-analysis demonstrates that severe reading and spelling difficulties can be ameliorated with appropriate treatment. In order to be better able to provide evidence-based interventions to children and adolescent with reading disabilities, research should intensify the application of blinded randomized controlled trials.
Highlights
Children, adolescents, and adults with reading disability experience a significant impairment in the acquisition of reading accuracy, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling skills, which cannot be accounted for by low IQ, visual acuity problems, neurological damage, or poor educational opportunities [1]
The mean effect sizes for phonics instruction are higher if trials using non-standardized measures are excluded from the analysis (Reading: g’ = 0.424; 95% CI [0.246, 0.601]; n = 25; Spelling: g’ = 0.376; 95% CI [0.065, 0.686]); n = 9). These findings demonstrate that the inclusion of studies with non-standardized measures in the present meta-analysis did not lead to an overestimation of the effect sizes and, does not confound the results
The first aim of this meta-analysis was to determine the effectiveness of different treatment approaches on reading and spelling performance of reading disabled children and adolescents
Summary
Adolescents, and adults with reading disability (dyslexia) experience a significant impairment in the acquisition of reading accuracy, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling skills, which cannot be accounted for by low IQ, visual acuity problems, neurological damage, or poor educational opportunities [1]. Impairments in auditory speech perception and processing, as well as visual attention and perception deficits are considered as the main causes of reading and spelling difficulties in dyslexia [3,4,5]. The evidence-based development and the evaluation of interventions for children and adolescents with reading disabilities are, of profound importance. Several systematic reviews have already summarized the findings of studies that evaluated the effectiveness of reading and spelling interventions. The review displays important results about the effectiveness of different types of reading instruction. Its main finding was that systematic instruction in learning letter sound relations and in blending sounds to form words is most effective for improving reading and spelling skills in disabled readers [8]. Despite the importance of this finding, 13 years after its publication, the NRP review needs to be updated in order to integrate recent empirical findings
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