Alexander, A., Anderson, H., Heilman, P., Voeller, K., & Torgesen, J. (1991). Phonological awareness training and the remediation of analytic decoding deficits in a group of severe dyslexics.  Annals of Dyslexia, 41, 193-206.

ABSTRACT

The goal of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Auditory Discrimination in Depth Program (ADD) in remediating the analytic decoding deficits of a group of severe dyslexics.  A group of ten severely dyslexic students ranging in age from 93 to 154 months were treated in a clinic setting for 38 to 124 hours (average of 65 hours).  Pre- and post-treatment testing was done with the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test and the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization to assess changes in phonological awareness and analytic decoding.

 

Eden G.F., Jones K.M., Cappell K., Gareau L., Wood F.B., Zeffiro T.A., Dietz N.A., Agnew J.A., Flowers D.L. (2004). Neural changes following remediation in adult developmental dyslexia. Neuron, 44(3), 411-22.

ABSTRACT

Brain imaging studies have explored the neural mechanisms of recovery in adults following acquired disorders and, more recently, childhood developmental disorders.  However, the neural systems underlying adult rehabilitation of neurobiologically based learning disabilities remain unexplored, despite their high incidence. Here we characterize the differences in brain activity during a phonological manipulation task before and after a behavioral intervention in adults with developmental dyslexia.  Phonologically targeted training resulted in performance improvements in tutored compared to nontutored dyslexics, and these gains were associated with signal increases in bilateral parietal and right perisylvian cortices.  Our findings demonstrate that behavioral changes in tutored dyslexic adults are associated with (1) increased activity in those left-hemisphere regions engaged by normal readers and (2) compensatory activity in the right perisylvian cortex.  Hence, behavioral plasticity in adult developmental dyslexia involves two distinct neural mechanisms, each of which has previously been observed either for remediation of developmental or acquired reading disorders.

 

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Johnson-Glenberg, M. C. (2000). Training reading comprehension in adequate decoders/poor comprehenders: Verbal versus visual strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 4, 772-782.

ABSTRACT

Third through fifth grade adequate decoders who were poor comprehenders were trained for 10 weeks in either the verbally based reciprocal teaching (RT) program (n=22) or the visually visualizing/verbalizing (V/V) program (n=23), or they were assigned to an untreated control group (n=14).  Training reading comprehension strategies in small groups enhanced comprehension as the experimental groups made significant gains on 11 measures, whereas the untreated control group made only 1 significant gain.  Between experimental group comparisons (yielding effect sizes > .32) favored the RT groups on several measures that depend on explicit, factual material, while the V/V group was favored on several visually mediated measures. Regarding which experimental condition was statistically optimal, the RT group made only 1 significantly greater gain the the V/V group on answering text-explicit open-ended questions.

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Kennedy, K., & Backman, J. (1993). Effectiveness of the Lindamood Auditory Discrimination in Depth Program with students with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 8 (4), 253-259.

ABSTRACT

Ten students with severe learning disabilities who received the Auditory Discrimination in Depth Program (C. H. Lindamood & P. C. Lindamood, 1975: referred to hereafter as the Lindamood program) on an intensive basis, in addition to a comprehensive remedial program, were matched for Verbal IQ, chronological age, reading, spelling, and phonological awareness abilities with 10 other students with severe learning disabilities who also received the comprehensive remedial program but not the Lindamood program component.  Progress in reading, spelling, phonological awareness, use of phonetic principles in spelling of real and nonwords, and phonetic reading of nonwords were documented in December and May.  Significantly greater gains in phonological awareness and phonetic spelling strategies were noted for the Lindamood program students when beginning and end of the year scores were compared.  Standardized reading and spelling measures improved for both groups over the year but were not significantly greater for the Lindamood program group.  The implications regarding future research are discussed.

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Pokorni, J., Worthington, C., & Jamison, P. (2004). Phonological  awareness intervention: Comparison of Fast ForWord, Earobics, and LiPS. Journal of Educational Research, 97 (3), 147-157.

ABSTRACT

Researchers have found that training in phonemic awareness (PA), a fundamental element for reading acquisition, is effective in varying degrees, depending on characteristics of the audience.  In this study, the authors explored the relative effectiveness of 3 programs – Fast ForWord, Earobics, and LiPS.  The authors randomly assigned 60 students with language and reading deficits to 1 of 3 interventions.  Students received three 1-hour daily intervention sessions during a 20-day summer program conducted by a large school district.  Measure of PA, language-, and reading-related skills were collected and analyzed.  Earobics and LiPS were associated with gains on PA measures 6 weeks after intervention. No group effects were found of language or reading measures.

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Sadoski, M. and Willson, V. (2006). Effects of a Theoretically Based Large-Scale Reading Intervention in a Multicultural Urban School District. American Educational Research Journal, 43, 1, 137-154.

ABSTRACT

In 1997 Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes partnered with Pueblo School District 60 (PSD60) in Pueblo, Colorado to implement a theoretically based program to improve low reading achievement on the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP).  PSD60 is an urban district with large percentages of minority enrollment and Title I schools.  Program intervention was implemented generally following the Comprehensive School Reform model (Borman, Hewes, Overman, and Brown, 2003).  This study focused on grades 3, 4, and 5 in which CSAP testing was conducted most years from 1997-2003.  A series of repeated measures analyses of covariance, controlling for school size, minority student percentage, SES, and number of years a school was involved in the intervention were conducted between PSD60 schools and the statewide CSAP average.   In both overall and Title 1 school analyses, statistically significant and increasing gains favoring the intervention were found.  Both practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

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Simos, P., Fletcher, J., Bergman, E., Breier, J., Foorman, B., Castillo, E., Davis, R., Fitzgerald, M., & Papanicolaou, A. (2002). Dyslexia-specific brain activation profile becomes normal following successful remedial training. Neurology, 58, 1203-1212.

ABSTRACT

Objectives: To examine changes in the spatiotemporal brain activation profiles associated with successful completion of an intensive intervention program in individual dyslexic children. Methods: The authors obtained magnetic source imaging scans during a pseudoword reading task from eight children (7 to 17 years old) before and after 80 hours of intensive remedial instruction. All children were initially diagnosed with dyslexia, marked by severe difficulties in word recognition and phonologic processing. Eight children who never experienced reading problems were also tested on two occasions separated by a 2-month interval.  Results: Before intervention, all children with dyslexia showed distinctly aberrant activation profiles featuring little or no activation of the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus (STGp), an area normally involved in phonologic processing, and increased activation of the corresponding right hemisphere area. After intervention that produced significant improvement in reading skills, activity in the left STGp increased by several orders of magnitude in every participant. No systematic changes were obtained in the activation profiles of the children without dyslexia as a function of time.  Conclusions: These findings suggest that the deficit in functional brain organization underlying dyslexia can be reversed after sufficiently intense intervention lasting as little as 2 months, and are consistent with current proposals that reading difficulties in many children represent a variation of normal development that can be altered by intensive intervention.  

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Torgesen, J., Alexander, A., Wagner, R., Rashotte, C., Voeller, K., Conway, T. & Rose, E. (2001). Intensive remedial instruction for children with severe reading disabilities: Immediate and long-term outcomes from two instructional approaches. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34, 33-58.

ABSTRACT

Sixty children with severe reading disabilities were randomly assigned to two instructional programs that incorporated principles of effective instruction but differed in depth and extent of instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemic decoding skills.  All children received 67.5 hours of one-to-one instruction in two 50-minute sessions per day for 8 weeks.  Both instructional programs produced very large improvements in generalized reading skills that were stable over a 2-year follow-up period.  When compared to the growth in broad reading ability that the participants made during their pervious 16 months in learning disabilities resource rooms, their growth during the intervention produced effect sizes of 4.4 for one of the interventions and 3.9 for the other.  Although the children’s average scores on reading accuracy and comprehension were in the average range at the end of the follow-up period, measures of reading rate showed continued severe impairment for most of the children.  Within 1 year following the intervention, 40% of the children were found to be no longer in need of special education services.  The two methods of instruction were not differently effective for children who entered the study with different levels of phonological ability, and the best overall predictors of long-term growth were resource room teacher ratings of attention/behavior, general verbal ability, and prior levels of component reading skills.

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