Improve Reading Performance Research Articles

The Experience of a Randomized Clinical Trial of Closed-Circuit Television versus Eccentric Viewing Training for People with Age-Related Macular Degeneration

IntroductionIn addition to optical devices, closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs) and eccentric viewing training are both recognized interventions to improve reading performance in individuals with vision loss secondary to age-related macular degeneration. Both are relatively expensive, however, either in the cost of the device or in the amount of time personnel need to provide training. In this randomized trial, we compared the effectiveness of these two interventions.MethodsParticipants with age-related macular degeneration and visual acuity between 6/48 (20/160) and 6/120 (20/400) first received basic low vision care, including optical devices. At the subsequent baseline visit, they undertook a battery of measures including logMAR visual acuity; reading speed and accuracy for text in 1.3M and 1M fonts; reading information on medicine bottles, utility bills, and food packages; the NEI-VFQ; the Geriatric Depression Scale; and a reading inventory questionnaire. They were then randomized to either obtaining a CCTV for home use or eccentric viewing training over the following six weeks.ResultsRecruitment was more difficult than expected for this population. Of 145 patients referred, 29 met the inclusion-exclusion criteria, 14 were willing to enroll, and 10 completed the trial. For the primary outcome (reading speed for 1.3M print), there was a significant improvement between baseline and outcome for the CCTV group (p = 0.005), but not for the eccentric viewing training group (p = 0.28), and the CCTV group showed significantly greater change (p = 0.04). There was a nonsignificant improvement in reading speed for 1M text and a decrease in the amount of time taken to read utility bill information in the CCTV group. There was a significant improvement in near visual acuity with current glasses with eccentric viewing training. The other measures did not reach statistical significance.DiscussionRandomized clinical trials for low vision rehabilitation, particularly in the elderly population with vision loss, are challenging, but such trials are important for the allocation of resources. This trial showed early indications of more impact on reading performance from CCTV than eccentric viewing training.

The Effectiveness of Phonemic and Phonological Awareness Program To Improve Reading Performance of First Grade Basic Education Students in Oman

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of a phonemic and phonological awareness program, on the Arabic reading performance of first grade basic education students in Oman. To achieve this aim, a quasi-experimental research design was adopted. An Arabic phonemic and phonological awareness test was designed together with training program for Arabic teachers. A sample of 205 students was selected from 4 schools and divided into two groups. The experiment was conducted in 10 weeks during which teachers taught using the program. A post-test was administered after the intervention and then the students were tested for the third time after six months to determine the delayed effect. Results showed that there were significant differences in the mean of the test scores between the control and the experimental groups in favor of the experimental group. Similarly, significant differences were indicated in the mean of the test scores among the experimental group between the pre and the post-test. On the other hand, no significant differences were noted between male and female students. Results also showed significant differences in the mean of the test scores among the experimental group in the third testing which was intended to measure the delayed effect.

A 0.5-V 28-nm 256-kb Mini-Array Based 6T SRAM With Vtrip-Tracking Write-Assist

This paper presents a 28-nm 256-kb 6T static random access memory operating down to near-threshold regime. The cell array is built on foundry 4-by-2 mini-array with split single-ended large signal sensing to enable an ultra-short local bit-line of 4-b length to improve variation tolerance and performance, and to reduce disturb while maintaining manufacturability. The design employs threshold power gating to facilitate lower NAP (Sleep) mode voltage/power and faster wake-up for the cell array, and low-swing global read bit-line (GRBL) with integrated low-swing voltage precharger to improve read performance and reduce the dynamic read power. A cell Vtrip-tracking write-assist (VTWA) lowers the selected sub-array supply to cell inverter trip voltage to enhance write-ability while providing PVT tracking capability to ensure adequate data retention margin for unselected cells in the selected sub-array. The 256-kb test chip is implemented in UMC 28-nm high- $\kappa $ metal-gate (H $\kappa $ MG) CMOS technology with macro area of $1058.22\times 374.76~\mu \text{m}^{2}$ . Error-free full functionality is achieved from 0.9 down to 0.5 V (limited by read VMIN without redundancy. The low-swing GRBL reduces dynamic power by 6.5% (8.0%) at 0.9 V (0.6 V). The VTWA improves the write VMIN by 75 mV (from 0.525 to 0.45 V). The measured maximum operation frequency is 735 MHz (20 MHz) at 0.9 V (0.5 V), TT corner, 25°.

The Effectiveness of Phonemic and Phonological Awareness Program To Improve Reading Performance of First Grade Basic Education Students in Oman

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of a phonemic and phonological awareness program, on the Arabic reading performance of first grade basic education students in Oman. To achieve this aim, a quasi-experimental research design was adopted. An Arabic phonemic and phonological awareness test was designed together with training program for Arabic teachers. A sample of 205 students was selected from 4 schools and divided into two groups. The experiment was conducted in 10 weeks during which teachers taught using the program. A post-test was administered after the intervention and then the students were tested for the third time after six months to determine the delayed effect. Results showed that there were significant differences in the mean of the test scores between the control and the experimental groups in favor of the experimental group. Similarly, significant differences were indicated in the mean of the test scores among the experimental group between the pre and the post-test. On the other hand, no significant differences were noted between male and female students. Results also showed significant differences in the mean of the test scores among the experimental group in the third testing which was intended to measure the delayed effect.

FlexLevel NAND Flash Storage System Design to Reduce LDPC Latency

Aggressive technology scaling and adoption of multilevel-cell technique lead to progressive increase of bit error rate (BER) of NAND flash memory. Consequently, conventional error correction code is not adequate to guarantee system reliability. As an alternative, low density parity check (LDPC) code is introduced to provide more powerful error correction capability. However, to achieve better performance, LDPC code demands extra memory sensing operations and more data transfer cycles, directly leading to longer read latency. To achieve both system reliability and read efficiency, we propose the FlexLevel NAND flash storage system design in this paper. FlexLevel consists of two levels of optimization: 1) LevelAdjust and 2) AccessEval. At device level, the LevelAdjust technique is proposed to reduce BER by broadening noise margin via threshold voltage level reduction. With LevelAdjust, BER is greatly reduced and no extra sensing levels are required to protect data integrity. Hence, read performance is improved. However, while LevelAdjust can improve system reliability and read performance, it causes density loss. To balance read performance improvement and density loss, we propose the AccessEval technique at system level. AccessEval identifies data with high LDPC overhead and only applies LevelAdjust technique to these data. The experimental results show that compared with the best existing works, the proposed design can achieve up to 11% read speedup with negligible density loss.

Reading Performance Improvements in Patients with Central Vision Loss without Age-Related Macular Degeneration after Undergoing Personalized Rehabilitation Training

ABSTRACTPurpose: To evaluate the efficacy of a reading rehabilitation program (RRP) in patients with central visual loss (CVL) and assess the impact of the RRP on the quality of life (QoL).Methods: The RRP included four in-office and 39 in-home training sessions over 6 weeks. Reading speed, duration, and font size were evaluated during each in-office session. The subjective perception of the QoL was assessed before and after the RRP using the short version of a questionnaire (World Health Organization Quality of Life). A control group who received advice about ocular conditions and low-vision aids also was included.Results: Seventeen patients with Stargardt’s disease (STGD), 11 with adult-onset foveomacular vitelliform dystrophy (AFVD), and eight with myopic macular degeneration (MMD) were included. The control group included five patients each with STGD, AFVD, and MMD. The respective mean corrected distance visual acuities (VAs) in patients with STGD, AFVD, MMD, and the control group were 0.57 ± 0.38, 0.51 ± 0.38, 0.49 ± 0.24, and 0.55 ± 0.25 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution; the mean corrected near VAs were 0.89 ± 0.20, 1.08 ± 0.17, 0.99 ± 0.34, and 1.18 ± 0.37 (M notation) using low-vision aids. The reading speed, duration, and font size improved in all groups. The RRP groups obtained (p ≤ 0.01) greater improvements than the control group in each reading performance variable assessed. Patients with STGD obtained greater improvements in the subjective evaluation; the control group did not obtain noteworthy improvement in any domain.Conclusions: The RRP improved reading performance in patients with CVL and positively impacted the subjective perception of the QoL.

The effect of spectacle treatment in patients with mild traumatic brain injury: a pilot study

BackgroundVisual symptoms and dysfunctions may be a part of the long‐term issues following mild traumatic brain injury. These issues may have an impact on near work and reading, and thus affect activities of daily life and the ability to return to work. The purpose of the study was to assess the effect of spectacle treatment on near work‐related visual symptoms, visual function and reading performance in patients with persisting symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury.MethodsEight patients with persisting symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury and anomalies of binocular function were included. Binocular function, visual symptoms and reading performance were assessed before and after spectacle treatment. Reading eye movements were recorded with eye tracking.ResultsFour patients showed a considerable symptom reduction along with minor improvement in clinical visual measures. Reading performance improved in four patients; however, the relationship to symptom reduction was inconsistent. The improvement was correlated to reduced average number of fixations per word (r = −0.89, p = 0.02), reduced proportion of regressive saccades (r = −0.93, p = 0.01) and a significant increase of mean progressive saccade length (p = 0.03).ConclusionThis pilot study found that spectacle treatment, specifically directed at optimising near task visual function, significantly reduced symptoms in 50 per cent of patients and improved reading performance in 50 per cent. While promising, lack of placebo control and lack of correlation between reading performance and symptom improvements means we cannot decipher mechanisms without further study.

A Lookahead Read Cache: Improving Read Performance for Deduplication Backup Storage

Data deduplication (dedupe for short) is a special data compression technique. It has been widely adopted to save backup time as well as storage space, particularly in backup storage systems. Therefore, most dedupe research has primarily focused on improving dedupe write performance. However, backup storage dedupe read performance is also a crucial problem for storage recovery. This paper designs a new dedupe storage read cache for backup applications that improves read performance by exploiting a special characteristic: the read sequence is the same as the write sequence. Consequently, for better cache utilization, by looking ahead for future references within a moving window, it evicts victims from the cache having the smallest future access. Moreover, to further improve read cache performance, it maintains a small log buffer to judiciously cache future access data chunks. Extensive experiments with real-world backup workloads demonstrate that the proposed read cache scheme improves read performance by up to 64.3%

A Comparison of Subjects’ Reading and Writing Performance and Preference While Using Various Portable Electronic Magnifiers

The ability to read print to help maintain independence and quality of life is a primary concern of with visual impairments (Krieger, 1967; Lamoureux et al., 2007; Leat, Legge, & Bullimore, 1999; Nguyen, Weismann, & Trauzettel-Klosinski, 2009; Stelmack et al., 2008). One option for reading is a CCTV (closed-circuit television) or, using a more specific term, electronic magnifier. An electronic magnifier uses a camera to enlarge images onto a screen. It emerged as assistive technology in the early 1970s. Uslan, Shen, and Shragai (1996) provide a historical overview of the evolution and availability of electronic magnifiers. They report electronic magnifier systems designed and built specifically for visually impaired people from the 1950s to the early 1970s with Apollo Lasers and Visualtek bringing these products to the market in the early 1970s (Uslan, Shen, & Sharagai, 1996, p. 466). Electronic magnifiers have the advantages of adjustable magnification, contrast enhancement, binocular viewing, and large screen size (Wolffsohn & Peterson, 2003). They have been shown to be an effective tool in improving reading performance (Jutai, Strong, & Russell-Minda, 2009), to be an important learning device for students (Peck, 1995), to increase reading rates (Lagrow, 1981), to extend reading duration (Goodrich, Kirby, Wagstaff, Oros, & McDevitt, 2004), and to provide lasting significant positive psychosocial impact (Huber, Jutai, Strong, & Plotkin, 2008). In the past, electronic magnifiers were only available as nonportable desktop electronic magnifiers. Portable electronic magnifiers are now readily available. The aim of this study was to gain an understanding of preferences, and reading and writing performance of subjects with visual impairments using different portable electronic magnifiers. Performance was measured by assessing reading rates, writing speeds, and equivalent power used. Preferences were determined by having subjects rank ease of writing tasks with portable electronic magnifiers. This study assesses trends and provides information that practitioners may find useful as they demonstrate and prescribe portable electronic magnifiers. METHODS Subjects Fourteen subjects were tested. The subjects' ages, ocular diagnosis, vision impairment, years of desktop electronic magnifier use, and education level are listed in Table 1. Subjects had no previous portable electronic magnifier experience, but they frequently used a desktop electronic magnifier for reading and writing. All subjects were employed at one of three agencies that serve who are visually impaired (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). Subjects volunteered to participate, and all testing was done in their place of employment. Portable electronic magnifiers Eight portable electronic magnifiers were classified into large and small categories, based on screen size. Table 2 shows screen size and magnification range. Large portable electronic magnifiers had diagonal screen measurements of 14.61 to 17.78 centimeters and smaller ones had a measurement of 10.16 centimeters. Large portable electronic magnifiers were: Miniviewer and Olympia by Telesensory, Traveller by Optelec, and Assist Vision Slider by New Times. Small portable electronic magnifiers were: Compact by Optelec, Pico by Telesensory, Quicklook by Ash Technology, and PocketViewer by HumanWare. Study design Subjects read text and performed three different writing tasks with all eight portable electronic magnifiers and the desktop electronic magnifier they used daily. Testing was done over two sessions; each lasted 60 to 90 minutes. All features of each portable electronic magnifier were explained and demonstrated. The subjects were given an unlimited amount of time to practice. They used the level of magnification that was most comfortable for them, and it was not changed during testing. …

The effect of coloured overlays and lenses on reading: a systematic review of the literature.

There are many anecdotal claims and research reports that coloured lenses and overlays improve reading performance. Here we present the results of a systematic review of this literature and examine the quality of the evidence. We systematically reviewed the literature concerning the effect of coloured lenses or overlays on reading performance by searching the PsychInfo, Medline and Embase databases. This revealed 51 published items (containing 54 data sets). Given that different systems are in use for issuing coloured overlays or lenses, we reviewed the evidence under four separate system headings (Intuitive, Irlen, Harris/Chromagen and Other), classifying each published item using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Although the different colour systems have been subjected to different amounts of scientific scrutiny, the results do not differ according to the system type, or whether the sample under investigation was classified as having visual stress (or a similarly defined condition), reading difficulty, or both. The majority of studies are subject to 'high' or 'uncertain' risk of bias in one or more key aspects of study design or outcome, with studies at lower risk from bias providing less support for the benefit of coloured lenses/overlays on reading ability. While many studies report improvements with coloured lenses, the effect size is generally small and/or similar to the improvement found with a placebo condition. We discuss the strengths and shortcomings of the published literature and, whilst acknowledging the difficulties associated with conducting trials of this type, offer some suggestions about how future trials might be conducted. Consistent with previous reviews and advice from several professional bodies, we conclude that the use of coloured lenses or overlays to ameliorate reading difficulties cannot be endorsed and that any benefits reported by individuals in clinical settings are likely to be the result of placebo, practice or Hawthorne effects.

Effects of text-to-speech software use on the reading proficiency of high school struggling readers

ABSTRACTThe literature highlights the benefits of text-to-speech (TTS) software when used as an assistive technology facilitating struggling readers’ access to print. However, the effects of TTS software use, upon students’ unassisted reading proficiency, have remained relatively unexplored. The researchers utilized an experimental design to investigate whether 9th grade struggling readers who use TTS software to read course materials demonstrate significant improvements in unassisted reading performance. A total of 164 students of 30 teachers in Hawaii participated in the study. Analyses of covariance results indicated that the TTS intervention had a significant, positive effect on student reading vocabulary and reading comprehension after 10 weeks of TTS software use (average 582 minutes). There are several limitations to the study; however, the current study opens up for discussions and need for further studies investigating TTS software as a viable reading intervention for adolescent struggling readers.

A systematic review of controlled trials on visual stress using Intuitive Overlays or the Intuitive Colorimeter

Claims that coloured filters aid reading date back 200 years and remain controversial. Some claims, for example, that more than 10% of the general population and 50% of people with dyslexia would benefit from coloured filters lack sound evidence and face validity. Publications with such claims typically cite research using methods that have not been described in the scientific literature and lack a sound aetiological framework.Notwithstanding these criticisms, some researchers have used more rigorous selection criteria and methods of prescribing coloured filters that were developed at a UK Medical Research Council unit and which have been fully described in the scientific literature. We review this research and disconfirm many of the more extreme claims surrounding this topic. This literature indicates that a minority subset of dyslexics (circa 20%) may have a condition described as visual stress which most likely results from a hyperexcitability of the visual cortex. Visual stress is characterised by symptoms of visual perceptual distortions, headaches, and eyestrain when viewing repetitive patterns, including lines of text. This review indicates that visual stress is distinct from, although sometimes co-occurs with, dyslexia. Individually prescribed coloured filters have been shown to improve reading performance in people with visual stress, but are unlikely to influence the phonological and memory deficits associated with dyslexia and therefore are not a treatment for dyslexia.This review concludes that larger and rigorous randomised controlled trials of interventions for visual stress are required. Improvements in the diagnosis of the condition are also a priority.

Visual Rehabilitation in Chronic Cerebral Blindness: A Randomized Controlled Crossover Study.

The treatment of patients suffering from cerebral blindness following stroke is a topic of much recent interest. Several types of treatment are under investigation, such as substitution with prisms and compensation training of saccades. A third approach, aimed at vision restitution is controversial, as a proper controlled study design is missing. In the current study, 27 chronic stroke patients with homonymous visual field defects were trained at home with a visual training device. We used a discrimination task for two types of stimuli: a static point stimulus and a new optic flow-discontinuity stimulus. Using a randomized controlled crossover design, each patient received two successive training rounds, one with high contrast stimuli in their affected hemifield (test) and one round with low-contrast stimuli in their intact hemifield (control). Goldmann and Humphrey perimetry were performed at the start of the study and following each training round. In addition, reading performance was measured. Goldmann perimetry revealed a statistically significant reduction of the visual field defect after the test training, but not after the control training or after no intervention. For both training rounds combined, Humphrey perimetry revealed that the effect of a directed training (sensitivity change in trained hemifield) exceeded that of an undirected training (sensitivity change in untrained hemifield). The interaction between trained and tested hemifield was just above the threshold of significance (p = 0.058). Interestingly, reduction of the field defect assessed by Goldmann perimetry increases with the difference between defect size as measured by Humphrey and Goldmann perimetry prior to training. Moreover, improvement of visual sensitivity measured by Humphrey perimetry increases with the fraction of non-responsive elements (i.e., more relative field loss) in Humphrey perimetry prior to training. Reading speed revealed a significant improvement after training. Our findings demonstrate that our training can result in reduction of the visual field. Improved reading performance after defect training further supports the significance of our training for improvement in daily life activities.

Improvement of Reading Performance of Frequency-Domain Chipless RFID Transponders

Improvement of Reading Performance of Frequency-Domain Chipless RFID Transponders

Improving Read Performance of NAND Flash SSDs by Exploiting Error Locality

NAND flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), which can serve as the caches of hard disk drives, have gained popularity in large-scale, high-performance storage. A type of advanced error correction code for SSDs, low-density parity-check (LDPC), is required to mitigate a considerable number of errors in the raw data of NAND flash. However, LDPC imposes read performanceoverhead due to the complex decoding procedure of LDPC. In this paper, we propose an error-correcting cache (EC-Cache) that exploits “ error locality ”, a characteristic of NAND flash memory, to improve the read performance of SSDs. We use the term “error locality” to refer to the property that the majority of errors in reads to the same flash page appear at the same positions until thepage is erased. By caching detected errors, we can correct a significant portion of errors in the requested flash page prior to the LDPC decoding process. This design significantly reduces LDPC decoding overhead because the latency of LDPC is correlated with thenumber of errors in the input data. We conduct experiments, including flash characterization, LDPC simulation, and SSD simulation,to evaluate EC-Cache. The experimental results demonstrate that EC-Cache can improve the read performance of LDPC-based SSDs by up to $2.6\times$ .

Analysis of an Animal-Assisted Reading Intervention for Young Adolescents with Emotional/Behavioral Disabilities

Teaching students to enjoy reading is important in middle level education; however, middle school students with emotional behavioral disabilities (EBD) frequently struggle with reading skills and frequently display motivational deficits during reading instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine if the presence/absence of a classroom pet dog impacted reading skills in four fifth-grade students with EBD. An alternating treatment design was used to assess the fluency, comprehension, and level of motivation in four students when using a reading intervention package during a dog present (dog and researcher) and a dog absent condition (researcher only). All participants improved reading performance during intervention conditions compared to baseline. Improvements in reading measures were observed across participants in both treatment conditions compared to baseline. Differences in motivation levels were reported in three participants who indicated they enjoyed the dog present condition while the fourth enjoyed both treatment conditions equally. Implications of the potential role of middle level educators pairing themselves with animals during academic interventions for middle school students and other areas for future research in the area of animal-assisted learning are discussed.

Children Reading to Dogs: A Systematic Review of the Literature.

BackgroundDespite growing interest in the value of human-animal interactions (HAI) to human mental and physical health the quality of the evidence on which postulated benefits from animals to human psychological health are based is often unclear. To date there exist no systematic reviews on the effects of HAI in educational settings specifically focussing on the perceived benefits to children of reading to dogs. With rising popularity and implementation of these programmes in schools, it is essential that the evidence base exploring the pedagogic value of these initiatives is well documented.MethodsUsing PRISMA guidelines we systematically investigated the literature reporting the pedagogic effects of reading to dogs. Because research in this area is in the early stages of scientific enquiry we adopted broad inclusion criteria, accepting all reports which discussed measurable effects related to the topic that were written in English. Multiple online databases were searched during January-March 2015; grey literature searches were also conducted. The search results which met the inclusion criteria were evaluated, and discussed, in relation to the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine levels of evidence; 27 papers were classified as Level 5, 13 as Level 4, 7 as Level 2c and 1 as Level 2b.ConclusionThe evidence suggests that reading to a dog may have a beneficial effect on a number of behavioural processes which contribute to a positive effect on the environment in which reading is practiced, leading to improved reading performance. However, the evidence base on which these inferences are made is of low quality. There is a clear need for the use of higher quality research methodologies and the inclusion of appropriate controls in order to draw causal inferences on whether or how reading to dogs may benefit children’s reading practices. The mechanisms for any effect remain a matter of conjecture.

TMR Sensitive Equalization for Electronic Servoing in Array-Reader-Based Hard Disk Drives

To achieve enhanced recording density, hard disk drive industry is transitioning into array-reader-based magnetic recording (ARMR) technology, which provides an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio for data detection by exploiting the diversity in signal, interference, and noise provided by the multiple read-elements. A 2-D equalizer, which is the heart of ARMR signal processing, acts to electronically steer the array-reader to provide optimum signal pickup from the track to result in better error-rate performance. To realize this enhanced performance, the 2-D equalizer should be matched to the reader location on the track, which cannot be guaranteed in practice due to track misregistration (TMR) arising from the servo control system. To mitigate this, we present an electronic servoing scheme that estimates the location of the dual-reader on a per-fragment basis and uses this to transform the reference equalizer to a new equalizer that is matched to the estimated location, hence, the name TMR sensitive equalization. Performance evaluation done ~1 Tb/in <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> shows that the proposed approach significantly improves read performance in the presence of large read-/write-TMR even without requiring additional adaptation cycles for the 2-D equalizer.

The Quadrato Motor Training model: implications to the treatment of Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease.

The Quadrato Motor Training model: implications to the treatment of Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease.

Improving Reading Performance for Non-English-Majored Graduate Students: Combining a Know-Want-Learn Plus Model of Meta-Cognitive Reading Strategy Instruction and Internet-Based Language Laboratory Support

This paper reviewed a one-term experiment on integrating internet-based language laboratory (IBLL) in teaching reading with the know-want-learn (KWL) plus model to first-year non-English- majored graduate students from Yangtze University. Subjects in this study consisted of 41 non- English-majored graduate students in the control group (CG) and 41 non-English-majored graduate students in the experimental group (EG). The results showed that 1) compared with a teacher- dominated approach for CG, internet-based language laboratory with KWL plus model meta-cog- nitive reading strategy instruction for EG did a better job in enhancing students’ reading skills; 2) There were significant differences between males in CG and EG and females in CG and EG; 3) Students in EG held the positive response for the combined instruction.