None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
This study tested potential treatments for Australian children who have severe problems learning to read. Some of poor readers find it hard to read via the letter-sound rules (phonics), some find it hard to read whole words by sight (sight-word reading), and many have both of these problems. In this study, one group of poor readers (N = 41) did 8 weeks of specific phonics training (i.e., reading via phonological decoding) and then 8 weeks of specific sight word training (i.e., reading via recognition of irregular words from memory). A second group of poor readers (N = 44) did the reverse order of training. The results showed that both specific sight word training and specific phonics training had large and significant valid treatment effects on trained irregular words, untrained irregular words, and word reading fluency; and that specific phonics training had an additional large and significant valid treatment effect on reading comprehension. These findings demonstrate the reliability of both phonics and sight word training in treating poor readers. This will aid Australia’s efforts to counteract the effects of poor reading in children by revealing how different treatments should be tailored to children with different types of reading impairment.
Interventions
Phonics treatment trained letter recognition, parsing, letter-sound rules, and blending. Sight-word treatment trained children to associate written irregular words (i.e., those that do not follow the letter-sound rules) with the appropriate pronunciations. These skills were trained using software programs. Children trained at home for 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week, for 8 weeks.
There were two treatment groups. Group 1 did no treatment (8 weeks) followed by phonics training (8 weeks) follo
Phonics treatment trained letter recognition, parsing, letter-sound rules, and blending. Sight-word treatment trained children to associate written irregular words (i.e., those that do not follow the letter-sound rules) with the appropriate pronunciations. These skills were trained using software programs. Children trained at home for 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week, for 8 weeks. There were two treatment groups. Group 1 did no treatment (8 weeks) followed by phonics training (8 weeks) followed by sight word training (8 weeks). Group 2 did the same except the order of training was reversed (i.e., they did sight word training before phonics training). There was one week between interventions. An extended washout period was not required.
Sponsors
Macquarie University
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Crossover
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Subject, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
7 Years to 12 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Children who have (1) English as their first language, (2) no problems with attention, hearing, sight, or behaviour, and (3) poor reading for their age (i.e., their ability to read nonwords or irregular words - as measured by the Castles and Coltheart 2 Reading Test - was below the average range (a z scores lower than -1) for their age).
Exclusion criteria
Poor attention, poor hearing, poor visual acuity, severe developmental delay
Outcome results
None listed