The Effectiveness of Remedial Programs for Reading Disabled Children of Different Ages: Does the Benefit Decrease for Older Children?

Abstract

One hundred and twenty-two severely reading disabled children were randomly assigned to one of two word identification training programs or a study skills control program. One program remediated deficient phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct instruction of letter-sound mappings. The other program taught children how to acquire, use, and monitor four metacognitive decoding strategies. The effectiveness of the remedial programs was evaluated for children in grades 2/3, 4, and 5/6 to determine whether programs were differentially effective at different grade levels. Both training approaches were associated with significant improvement in word identification and word attack skills and sizeable transfer-of-training effects. The phonological program resulted in greater transfer across the phonological processing domain, whereas the strategy training program produced broader transfer for real words of both regular and irregular orthography. Children at each grade level made equivalent gains with remediation. These results suggest that the phonological deficits associated with reading disability are amenable to focused and intensive remediation and that this effort is well directed across the elementary school years. From grades 2 through 6, there is no evidence of a developmental window beyond which phonological deficits cannot be effectively remediated with intensive phonological training.

Computer‐based training with ortho‐phonological units in dyslexic children: new investigations

“…However, other authors (Lovett & Steinbach, 1997;Tijms & Hoeks, 2005;Tijms, Hoeks, Paulussen-Hoogeboom, & Smolenaars, 2003) have shown that the effectiveness of training does not decrease with increasing age. The current study extends these findings by showing that adolescents profit from training as much as elementary-school children do (Magnan & Ecalle, 2006;Magnan et al, 2004).…”

A computerized treatment of dyslexia: Benefits from treating lexico-phonological processing problems

“…Other studies indicated, however, that effectiveness of treatment does not necessarily decrease with increasing age. For example, Lovett and Steinbach (1997) reported equivalent gains for children in grades two to six. Similarly, Torgesen et al (2001) failed to observe a relation between age and treatment effect.…”

Identification des mots écrits chez les dyslexiques phonologiques : mise à l’essai d’un programme d’intervention compensatoire

“…L'efficacité d'un enseignement de stratégies métacogni-tives a été démontrée dans différentes recherches (Palincsar et Brown, 1984 ;Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Mistretta-Hampston, et Échevarria, 1998 ;Rémond et Quet, 1999). Enfin, les résultats du WIST (Lovett et collab., 1994 ;Lovett et Steinbach, 1997 ;Lovett et collab., 2000) quant au transfert s'avèrent aussi un facteur décisif dans le choix de ce programme. En effet, un programme d'intervention visant la rééducation des procédures d'identification des mots écrits ne peut s'avérer intéressant que dans la mesure où ses effets sont transférables non seulement à l'identification des mots écrits non entraînés (qui n'ont pas fait l'objet d'un entraînement), mais aussi à des tâches de compréhension.…”