Effect of Nonlinguistic Auditory Training on Phonological and Reading Skills

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the effect of nonverbal auditory training on reading and phonological awareness tasks in children with dyslexia and the effect of age in relation to post-training learning considering the ages from 7 to 14. Methods: In experiment 1, one group with dyslexia (total = 12) was trained and compared with a group of untrained dyslexic subjects (total = 28). In experiment 2, the performance of the trained dyslexic group (total = 18) was compared at three different moments: 2 months before, at the beginning, and at the end of training. Training was carried out for 2 months using a computer program responsible for training discrimination skills. Results: The group receiving nonverbal auditory training demonstrated significant improvements (mainly for the group from 7 to 10 years old), not only in the nonverbal auditory skills trained (p < 0.001), but also in phonological awareness syllable tasks (synthesis, segmentation, manipulation and syllable transposition) in experiment 1 (p < 0.003), and phonemic tasks (p < 0.001) and text reading (p < 0.001) in experiment 2. Conclusion: The results suggest a link between verbal and nonverbal skills, in addition to corroborating studies regarding the existence of a critical learning period.

O uso de software no treinamento auditivo em crianças: revisão teórica

“…It enables significant improvements in phonological awareness skills (syllable and phoneme), reading texts and non-verbal listening skills. This study suggests that there is a connection between verbal and non-verbal skills 21 .…”

Effects of different types of auditory temporal training on language skills: a systematic review

“…Of these 13 papers, 10 included auditory temporal processing and language assessment before and after training (5,7,10-17). Of these 10 papers, 7 indicated learning gains in auditory and language skills only in the study group after training based on behavioral (5,10,13,16) and electrophysiological measures (12,15,17).…”

“…Of these 10 papers, 7 indicated learning gains in auditory and language skills only in the study group after training based on behavioral (5,10,13,16) and electrophysiological measures (12,15,17). Therefore, these findings support the hypothesized relationship between auditory temporal processing and language skills (5,10,12,13,15-17). However, relevant methodological concerns are present in some of these studies.…”

“…Additionally, Heim et al (12), Russo et al (15) and Hayes et al (17) did not include an alternative training group to investigate whether the improvement after training was specifically related to the type of training, for example, auditory temporal training. Murphy and Schochat (10) investigated the influence of non-verbal auditory training on language skills in two experiments. In the first experiment, only the group of children with dyslexia that underwent auditory temporal training exhibited improvement in language skills compared to an untrained control group; in the second experiment, a group of children with dyslexia exhibited improvement in language skills following auditory training, but not after a period with an alternative intervention (language training).…”

“…Most of the papers that investigated the use of software demonstrated that this approach can be an effective form of training for improving auditory temporal processing (5,7,10-13,15-17). However, whether this learning generalizes to language skills remains controversial (5-10,12-17).…”