Preventive Treatment of Dyslexia by a Preschool Training Program for Children with Language Impairments

Abstract

Assigned 26 male children with language impairments to a preschool treatment program aimed at reducing the risk of dyslexia. The treatment consisted of exercises of phonemic awareness and preliminary grapheme-phoneme conversions on a two-letter syllable level. At the end of the first school year, the children's performances on tests of reading, spelling, and neuropsychological functions were compared to those of a control group consisting of 20 male children with language impairments who had received traditional treatment, mostly speech therapy. The experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on three of four reading and spelling tests, and improved significantly on four tests of language and attention. The control group did not improve significantly on any test. However, the groups did not differ significantly on any neuropsychological posttreatment measure. Thus, the treatment had the clearest effects on the acquisition of reading and spelling.