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

Maria Luisa Lorusso,Alessandro Antonietti,Alice Cancer,Pier Luca Lanzi,Silvia Bonacina

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01510

Maria Luisa Lorusso, Alessandro Antonietti + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01510

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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.

Highlights

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a specific learning disorder which has a neurobiological origin and is characterized by the presence of reading difficulties not accounted for by sensory, neurological, or intellectual deficits (Lyon et al, 2003; Snowling and Hulme, 2012)
The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the computer-assisted version of a new intervention, called Rhythmic Reading Training (RRT), aimed at improving reading skills in students with DD, in which reading exercises are combined with rhythm processing
Previous research suggested that musical abilities play a role in reading and that musical training might improve reading skills

Summary

Introduction

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a specific learning disorder which has a neurobiological origin and is characterized by the presence of reading difficulties not accounted for by sensory, neurological, or intellectual deficits (Lyon et al, 2003; Snowling and Hulme, 2012). Children with DD lack sensitivity to speech prosody (Corriveau et al, 2007; Goswami et al, 2010), pitch perception (Baldeweg et al, 1999; Goswami et al, 2011) and rhythm (Overy et al, 2003; Thomson and Goswami, 2008; Corriveau and Goswami, 2009; Huss et al, 2011; Goswami et al, 2013; Flaugnacco et al, 2014), which are sound attributes cued by amplitude, duration, and frequency changes of the acoustic signal These basic auditory perceptual and timing difficulties could contribute to the development of impaired phonological representation for words, which is the distinctive feature of DD (Leong and Goswami, 2014a,b). All these findings together suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing basic auditory perception skills of children with DD may impact language and reading abilities

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