Neuroplasticity-Based Cognitive and Linguistic Skills Training Improves Reading and Writing Skills in College Students

Beth A Rogowsky,Paula Tallal,Pericles Papamichalis,Sabine Heim,Laura Villa

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00137

Abstract

This study reports an evaluation of the effect of computer-based cognitive and linguistic training on college students’ reading and writing skills. The computer-based training included a series of increasingly challenging software programs that were designed to strengthen students’ foundational cognitive skills (memory, attention span, processing speed, and sequencing) in the context of listening and higher level reading tasks. Twenty-five college students (12 native English language; 13 English Second Language), who demonstrated poor writing skills, participated in the training group. The training group received daily training during the spring semester (11 weeks) with the Fast ForWord Literacy (FFW-L) and upper levels of the Fast ForWord Reading series (Levels 3–5). The comparison group (n = 28) selected from the general college population did not receive training. Both the training and comparison groups attended the same university. All students took the Gates MacGinitie Reading Test (GMRT) and the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS) Written Expression Scale at the beginning (Time 1) and end (Time 2) of the spring college semester. Results from this study showed that the training group made a statistically greater improvement from Time 1 to Time 2 in both their reading skills and their writing skills than the comparison group. The group who received training began with statistically lower writing skills before training, but exceeded the writing skills of the comparison group after training.

Highlights

While reading instruction is the focus of early literacy skills, as students move into the high school and college years there is increasing focus on writing
Means ± standard deviations are shown; p-values are based on contrast analyses with a significance level set to 5%; due to a non-significantTime × English as a second language (ESL) interaction, post hoc contrasts were not applicable for the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS)
It is of interest that the students with weak writing skills performed well within the normal range on reading at pre-test, albeit lower than the comparison group, on a standardized reading test (GMRT)

Summary

Introduction

While reading instruction is the focus of early literacy skills, as students move into the high school and college years there is increasing focus on writing. The college enrollment rate of 2011 U.S high school graduates was 72.35% for young women and 64.6% for young men (U.S Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) With such a high number of students enrolled in college one would assume reading and writing scores to be high for this population of students, as college places such heavy demands on both reading and writing. As the majority of 12th grade students continue to fail to reach proficiency in writing skills many colleges are increasingly faced with providing developmental writing instruction to their students. This may be especially important to those colleges that have a high proportion of students with English as a second language (ESL) and underrepresented minority students

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Discussion

Conclusion