Using computer-based readers to improve reading comprehension of students with dyslexia

Abstract

Twenty-eight middle school students, diagnosed as dyslexic and attending a school using the Slingerland approach to remediation of dyslexia, used a computer-based reading system for reading literature for about one-half hour a day for a semester. The system proved to be a strong compensatory aid, enabling 70 percent of the students to read with greater comprehension, approximately one grade level or more improvement, as measured by the Gray Oral Reading Test. For 40 percent of the students, the gains were large, from two to as much as five grade levels. However, not all students benefited. Fourteen percent showed lower comprehension scores when using the system, and there is some indication that this degradation is associated with kinesthetic-motor weakness. Some students reported gains in reading speed and exhibited increased span of attention for and endurance in reading when using the system. We did not find evidence that the computer-reader technology provided a positive remediation benefit incremental to that obtained from the school's intensive Slingerland remediation program. Our results indicate that computer-readers are important compensatory aids that can enable many people with dyslexia to perform more effectively in reading-related tasks associated with school and work.

Compensatory Effectiveness of Speech Recognition on the Written Composition Performance of Postsecondary Students with Learning Disabilities

“…Students with low scores on unassisted reading comprehension scores showed the most growth when using assistance while those with relatively high unassisted reading scores showed no growth, or poorer performance when using the speech synthesis. Elkind, Cohen, and Murray (1993) found a similar pattern with the same technology. In the current study an inverse correlation existed but it was not significant (-.338, p=.067).…”

“…Higgins and Raskind (1997), as well as Elkind, Cohen, and Murray (1993) have shown that speech synthesis, in combination with optical character recognition, improved comprehension of college students with severe reading deficits. Both studies also found that there was a significant inverse correlation between silent reading score without assistance and amount of improvement in scores when using SS/OCR.…”

Benefits of assistive reading software for students with attention disorders

“…Higgins and Raskind (1997) obtained a similar result. In an earlier study, Elkind, Cohen, and Murray (1993) found an enhancement of comprehension in a study of middle school students. Leong (1992) studied the effects of text-to-speech systems on reading comprehension of elementary school students in a task in which the students were given word knowledge training.…”

Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) for Dyslexic Students

“…For example, Elkind et al [4] report on the usefulness of text-to-speech systems to improve reading comprehension of students with dyslexia but their paper is more focused on the area of generic educational tools to help access text rather than providing a focused CALL environment. The Kar2ouche Shakespeare range [6] provides programs that present text and audio from Shakespeare's plays with the complete character set and a variety of backgrounds, props and sound effects.…”