Effectiveness of computer-based treatment for dyslexia in a clinical care setting: outcomes and moderators

Abstract

The clinical effectiveness of a treatment for children with dyslexia was examined, as well as the moderating impact of plausible cognitive and socio-economic factors on treatment success. Results revealed that the treatment group accrued significant greater gains than the control group in reading and spelling skills. The treatment group obtained a level of reading accuracy and spelling that was comparable with the normative mean. Post-treatment levels of reading rate were comparable to the lower bound of the normal range. Treatment effectiveness was robust against individual differences, except for a moderating impact of phonological memory and rapid automatized naming.

Keywords:

• dyslexia
• reading disability
• intervention
• moderators

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to my colleagues Anatolij Plechanov and Sebastian Aravena for their helpful comments at various stages of the research.

Notes

aSGA, small for gestational age (within the lowest 10% in birth weight for their gestational age).

bRS, raw score.

cχ ²-test; all other tests are t-tests.

aNumber of words correctly read within 1 min.

bNumber of errors.

cTime in seconds.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

aWhen participants say something wrong the tutor corrects them, when they make an error on the computer, it gives feedback on their error.

bGraphs representing phones (which are located within the syllable icon) are colored red, graphs representing the written form are colored black. Operators (rule icons) are colored yellow. ©copyright IWAL.

1. As the number of referrals significantly outnumbered the clinic’s treatment capacity, the control group was a waiting list control group that had to wait for about a year before they gained access to the treatment. Although they eventually commenced treatment, their treatment progress itself was beyond the scope of this study.