Reading acceleration training changes brain circuitry in children with reading difficulties

Abstract

IntroductionDyslexia is characterized by slow, inaccurate reading. Previous studies have shown that the Reading Acceleration Program (RAP) improves reading speed and accuracy in children and adults with dyslexia and in typical readers across different orthographies. However, the effect of the RAP on the neural circuitry of reading has not been established. In the current study, we examined the effect of the RAP training on regions of interest in the neural circuitry for reading using a lexical decision task during fMRI in children with reading difficulties and typical readers.MethodsChildren (8–12 years old) with reading difficulties and typical readers were studied before and after 4 weeks of training with the RAP in both groups.ResultsIn addition to improvements in oral and silent contextual reading speed, training-related gains were associated with increased activation of the left hemisphere in both children with reading difficulties and typical readers. However, only children with reading difficulties showed improvements in reading comprehension, which were associated with significant increases in right frontal lobe activation.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate differential effects of the RAP on neural circuits supporting reading in both children with reading difficulties and typical readers and suggest that the intervention may stimulate use of typical neural circuits for reading and engage compensatory pathways to support reading in the developing brain of children with reading difficulties.

Improvement in non-linguistic executive functions following reading acceleration training in children with reading difficulties: An ERP study

“…The RAP training has been found to improve executive functions, such as error monitoring during a lexical decision task [compared to typical readers (TRs) who trained on the RAP)] Horowitz- Kraus and Breznitz, 2013 and working memory and attention abilities (compared to agematched individuals with RD who did not train on the RAP) [50]. A recent Magnetic Resonance Imaging study also found that the RAP training results in increased activation in neural circuits related to executive functions in children with RD during word reading (i.e., in the anterior cingulate cortex) [37]. However, since lexical decision making is a linguistic reading task by nature and the working memory and attention measures in Niedo's study were measured in the linguistic domain, we cannot conclude that the RAP also has a direct effect on executive functions in the nonlinguistic domain, which was the aim of the current study.…”

“…The procedure forces the reader to process words in a fast, holistic manner and 'releases' the bottle-neck in working memory, which enables comprehension. [32] In turn, the readers' ability to read words improves as their mental lexicon becomes more stable and their error monitoring improves [34,32,37]. The RAP training has been found to improve executive functions, such as error monitoring during a lexical decision task [compared to typical readers (TRs) who trained on the RAP)] Horowitz- Kraus and Breznitz, 2013 and working memory and attention abilities (compared to agematched individuals with RD who did not train on the RAP) [50].…”

“…1). In previous studies, we have shown that the lower the starting point in reading as well as that in certain domains of executive functions (i.e., error monitoring in reading), the greater the gain in these domains [15,37,38]; Horowitz-Kraus and Breznitz, 2013; [35,36,45]. We therefore hypothesized that adolescents with RD would benefit more from training than TRs, and would display this through a greater decrease in ERP amplitudes from Test 1 to Test 2 compared to TRs.…”

“…Fluent reading, which is the ability to decode contextual words automatically, depends on accurate, timely mannered decoding of words [11] and intact phonology, orthography, and semantics and basic cognitive abilities, such as attention and other executive functions [19]. The RAP forces the reader to visually follow the letters (i.e., visual attention) as they are erased from the screen (i.e., reliance on working memory) at a progressively faster speed (i.e., speed of processing) [15,37,38,32]. Monitoring comprehension ensures that the trainees do not only track the letters with their eyes, but that they also keep this information in their working memory and process the linguistic information.…”

“…The Reading Acceleration Program (RAP) [12] is a reading fluency program that improves word-decoding accuracy and reading comprehension in readers with or without RD [15,8,9], in both Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tine young readers [7,16,8,9,37,38,32,50] and adult readers [15,13,31]. Fluent reading, which is the ability to decode contextual words automatically, depends on accurate, timely mannered decoding of words [11] and intact phonology, orthography, and semantics and basic cognitive abilities, such as attention and other executive functions [19].…”