Investigating the Improvement of Decoding Abilities and Working Memory in Children with Incremental or Entity Personal Conceptions of Intelligence: Two Case Reports.

Marianna Alesi,Annamaria Pepi,Gaetano Rappo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01939

Abstract

One of the most significant current discussions has led to the hypothesis that domain-specific training programs alone are not enough to improve reading achievement or working memory abilities. Incremental or Entity personal conceptions of intelligence may be assumed to be an important prognostic factor to overcome domain-specific deficits. Specifically, incremental students tend to be more oriented toward change and autonomy and are able to adopt more efficacious strategies. This study aims at examining the effect of personal conceptions of intelligence to strengthen the efficacy of a multidimensional intervention program in order to improve decoding abilities and working memory. Participants included two children (M age = 10 years) with developmental dyslexia and different conceptions of intelligence. The children were tested on a whole battery of reading and spelling tests commonly used in the assessment of reading disabilities in Italy. Afterwards, they were given a multimedia test to measure motivational factors such as conceptions of intelligence and achievement goals. The children took part in the T.I.R.D. Multimedia Training for the Rehabilitation of Dyslexia (Rappo and Pepi, 2010) reinforced by specific units to improve verbal working memory for 3 months. This training consisted of specific tasks to rehabilitate both visual and phonological strategies (sound blending, word segmentation, alliteration test and rhyme test, letter recognition, digraph recognition, trigraph recognition, and word recognition as samples of visual tasks) and verbal working memory (rapid words and non-words recognition). Posttest evaluations showed that the child holding the incremental theory of intelligence improved more than the child holding a static representation. On the whole this study highlights the importance of treatment programs in which both specificity of deficits and motivational factors are both taken into account. There is a need to plan multifaceted intervention programs based on a transverse approach, considering both cognitive and motivational factors.

Highlights

One of the most significant current discussions has led to the hypothesis that domain-specific training programs alone are not enough to improve decoding abilities or working memory (Ho and Guthrie, 2013; Jaeggi et al, 2014)
The goal of this study was to assess the role of personal conceptions of intelligence in order to strengthen the efficacy of a multidimensional intervention program to improve decoding abilities and working memory in dyslexia
The main strength of this study lies in contributing to the current literature with respect to the debate around the controversy concerning the efficacy of domain-specific intervention programs

Summary

Introduction

One of the most significant current discussions has led to the hypothesis that domain-specific training programs alone are not enough to improve decoding abilities or working memory (Ho and Guthrie, 2013; Jaeggi et al, 2014). It is becoming increasingly evident that personal conceptions of intelligence play a key role as prognostic variables in the planning of training programs to rehabilitate reading and memory deficits This is because of the way intelligence is conceived is assumed to sustain and maintain the readiness to recover own personal difficulties and to be oriented toward change and autonomy through training (Pepi et al, 2008). Incremental theorists conceive their intelligence as a resource which can be increased through personal engagement and effort They tend to choose learning goals which allow them to prefer challenging tasks and employ successful strategies in order to improve their abilities. At age 9 both girls had been certified by a public institution as dyslexics, in line with current legislation Families reported that their children had never been engaged in specific reading or working memory therapy

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