Improving neural response to sound improves reading.

Abstract

Despite intense focus on improving reading scores, the most recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that only one in three fourth grade students in the United States read at or above a proficient level, a change of only 5% since 1992 (1). In PNAS, Hornickel et al. (2) review the growing body of evidence that links reading failure to auditory processing disorders. They report that a group of dyslexic children who used an assistive listening FM system for one school year during classroom instruction significantly increased their phonological awareness (P < 0.001) and basic reading scores (P = 0.006). These data support an increasing number of studies that demonstrate that rapid and significant improvement in reading can result from auditory interventions. Their study also provides physiological data that supports the hypothesis that children with language learning impairments, including dyslexia, respond inconsistently to the rapidly changing spectrotemporal acoustic cues in speech and that this response becomes more consistent after auditory intervention.