Tapping in time to a metronome beat (hereafter beat synchronization) shows considerable variability in child populations, and individual differences in beat synchronization are reliably related to reading development. Children with developmental dyslexia show impairments in beat synchronization. These impairments may reflect deficiencies in auditory perception of the beat which in turn affect auditory-motor mapping, or may reflect an independent motor deficit. Here, we used a new methodology in EEG based on measuring beat-related steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs, Nozaradan et al., 2015) in an attempt to disentangle neural sensory and motor contributions to behavioral beat synchronization in children with dyslexia. Children tapped with both their left and right hands to every second beat of a metronome pulse delivered at 2.4 Hz, or listened passively to the beat. Analyses of preferred phase in EEG showed that the children with dyslexia had a significantly different preferred phase compared to control children in all conditions. Regarding SS-EPs, the groups differed significantly for the passive Auditory listening condition at 2.4 Hz, and showed a trend toward a difference in the Right hand tapping condition at 3.6 Hz (sensorimotor integration measure). The data suggest that neural rhythmic entrainment is atypical in children with dyslexia for both an auditory beat and during sensorimotor coupling (tapping). The data are relevant to a growing literature suggesting that rhythm-based interventions may help language processing in children with developmental disorders of language learning.

Here, we report further analysis of data drawn from a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) run in the United Kingdom designed to evaluate the efficacy of an adaptive software game to aid the learning of English phonics, GraphoGame Rime. We evaluate the efficacy of GraphoGame Rime for the "top half" of players in the RCT, children aged 6 to 7 years who played above the group mean play progress point (95 children). We also analyze three sub-groupings of this cohort. The GraphoGame family of games in different languages was originally designed to support children at family risk of dyslexia, hence we analyzed data for the subgroup of the GraphoGame Rime children who were struggling in school and had Individual Education Plans (IEPs). Secondly, we analyzed data from the younger children in the RCT, born in the Spring and Summer months, as international studies of GraphoGame have found the strongest effects during the first year of reading tuition and our participants were in their second year of reading tuition. Finally, we analyzed GraphoGame Rime data from players in schools rated as "requiring improvement." Schools that are found to be "requiring improvement" in the United Kingdom are encouraged to use additional teaching strategies to achieve better outcomes. GraphoGame Rime is relatively cheap to acquire and easy to implement, hence if it offers significant gains over "business-as-usual" this would be a valulable additional strategy for such schools. We find that GraphoGame Rime is more effective than "business-as-usual" in developing knowledge of English phonics for all of the groupings analyzed. We conclude that the supplementary use of GraphoGame Rime in addition to ongoing classroom literacy instruction can benefit children in learning phonic decoding and spelling skills.

This study explores the neurocognitive predictors of response to intervention with GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime), an adaptive software game designed to aid the learning of English phonics. A cohort of 398 children (aged 6–7 years) who had participated in a recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) of GG Rime in the United Kingdom were studied. Half were randomly assigned to play GG Rime and the other half were assigned to Business As Usual (BAU). A series of pretests were given prior to the intervention to all participants, designed to measure phonological awareness skills, executive function (EF) skills and the ability to synchronise finger tapping to a rhythmic beat. Rhythmic synchronisation has been linked to reading readiness and early reading attainment, and is related to phonological awareness. Individual differences prior to the intervention in all three types of measure were significantly associated with progression through the game. Gender was also important for progression through the game, with boys progressing significantly further than girls. Vocabulary was not a predictor of progression through the game. Playing time, rhythmic synchronisation, phonological skills and EF skills did not differ by gender. Once playing time and non-verbal cognitive ability were controlled, phonological awareness, EF, rhythmic synchronisation and gender all remained significant predictors of progression through the game. In further analyses comparing these predictors, their interactions and controlling for the autoregressor of prior responsiveness to phonics instruction, phoneme awareness and EF skills were the strongest unique predictors. Analyses with the whole cohort (analysing BAU and GG children independently) showed that all neurocognitive measures contributed to progress in reading and spelling over the school year. We conclude that individual differences in phonological skills and EF skills predict which children will benefit most from computer assisted reading interventions like GG Rime. Further, boys respond better to this computerised intervention than girls. Accordingly, to be maximally beneficial to poor readers, the supplementary use of GG Rime in addition to ongoing classroom literacy instruction could be especially targeted to boys, but should be accompanied by a focus on developing both oral phonological awareness and EF skills.