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The use of adequate reading comprehension strategies is important to read efficiently. Students with dyslexia not only read slower and less accurately, they also use fewer reading comprehension strategies. To compensate for their decoding problems, they often receive audio-support (narration written text). However, audio-support linearly guides readers from beginning to end through texts, possibly hindering the use of reading comprehension strategies in expository texts and negatively impacting reading time and reading comprehension performance. We examined to what extent audio-support affects reading comprehension strategies, reading times, and reading comprehension performance in 21 secondary school students with dyslexia and 22 typically developing controls. Participants were provided with three types of assignments (summarizing, open-ended questions, statement questions) in each condition (written text with and without audio-support). SMI RED-500 eye tracker captured eye movements during reading. The standard deviation of the weighted fixation duration times on the three paragraphs was considered indicative of the disparity of readers' attention within the text. Following a discrimination based on experts' reading behavior and hand-coded validation, these scores visualized whether students used the intensive reading strategy (reading whole text) or selective reading strategy (focusing on part of the text). In open-ended assignments, students divided their attention more over the whole text instead of focusing on one specific part when audio was added. In addition, audio-support increased reading time in students with and without dyslexia in most tasks, while in neither of the tasks audio-support affected reading comprehension performance. Audio-support impacts reading comprehension strategy and reading time in all students.

We investigated the adequacy of the conduct and possible benefits of the use of dynamic maths interviews by 19 fourth grade teachers with students showing low maths achievement to facilitate the identification of maths needs. This study shows the potential of an analytical framework to evaluate the adequacy and benefits of dynamic maths interviews in a more valid way by viewing relevant aspects in conjunction. The intervention consisted of a dynamic maths interview teacher professional development programme and a practice period. During this practice period the teachers conducted an interview with each individual student involved in this study. Qualitative analyses of the transcripts of the video-recorded interviews showed the conduct of the individual dynamic maths interviews to be adequate and to facilitate the identification and understanding of the educational needs of students with low maths achievement. Using dynamic maths interviews, teachers provided feedback and support that were clearly attuned to the specific maths needs of students.

The goal of this study was to examine the post-treatment development of word and pseudoword accuracy and fluency and its cognitive and linguistic predictors in Dutch children with dyslexia compared with typical readers in the upper primary grades. Word and pseudoword reading accuracy and fluency were assessed at the start and end of grade 5 and at the end of grade 6. Phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and visual attention span were assessed at the start of grade 5. Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that children with dyslexia were less accurate than typical readers and showed very little improvements in accuracy over time. They were also less fluent and showed less growth in reading fluency than typical readers. The children with dyslexia did improve more in word reading fluency than in pseudoword reading fluency over time. Visual attention span and phonological awareness predicted reading accuracy development in typical readers, while rapid naming predicted individual differences in reading fluency in children with dyslexia. It can be concluded that in the upper grades, children with dyslexia not only struggled with fluent reading, but they also still struggled with accurate reading in a relatively transparent orthography like Dutch, even after they had received a reading intervention to remediate their reading difficulties.

The present study examined how embedded activities to support executive functions helped children to benefit from a computer intervention that targeted preliteracy skills. Three intervention groups were compared on their preliteracy gains in a randomized controlled trial design: an experimental group that worked with software to stimulate early literacy with embedded executive-functioning support (EL + EF group), an experimental group that worked with the same early literacy software without the explicit EF-support (EL group) and a control group that played with language discovery games from the same software. These groups were contrasted on their preliteracy progress over time and on their learning behaviours while working with the software. Results showed that children in the two experimental groups progressed more in preliteracy skills on the long-term, with the EL + EF group showing the highest learning effects. These results were mainly shown for the children with lower levels of EFs. Moreover, children in the EL + EF group showed more independent behaviour and played more games than children in the EL group. These results indicate that young children can show more effective learning over time during computer interventions when their executive functions are kept active.

A common assumption in multimedia design is that audio-visual materials with pictures and spoken narrations lead to better learning outcomes than visual-only materials with pictures and on-screen text. The present study questions the generalizability of this modality effect. We explored how modality effects change over time, taking into account study strategies during learning and the modality of the final performance measure. Eighty-four university students (M[subscript age]?=?21.4) studied learner-paced visual-only or audio-visual multimedia presentations and answered written and oral retention and transfer questions immediately after learning and after 1 day. There was no performance difference between the audio-visual and the visual-only groups immediately after learning, but after 1 day, the visual-only group had significantly higher scores on three of four outcome measures. This reversed modality effect was independent of test modality, but both groups scored higher on written than on oral questions. While both groups spent on average 33 min studying, the visual-only group went through the materials at a faster pace and repeated more slides. In sum, results contradict common multimedia design recommendations and instead suggest that learner-paced presentations should include on-screen text. Benefits of on-screen text could be due in part to the successful use of reading strategies.

Learning to read is a complex process that develops normally in the majority of children and requires the mapping of graphemes to their corresponding phonemes. Problems with the mapping process nevertheless occur in about 5% of the population and are typically attributed to poor phonological representations, which are--in turn--attributed to underlying speech processing difficulties. We examined auditory discrimination of speech sounds in 6-year-old beginning readers with a familial risk of dyslexia ("n" = 31) and no such risk ("n" = 30) using the mismatch negativity (MMN). MMNs were recorded for stimuli belonging to either the same phoneme category (acoustic variants of /b[schwa]/) or different phoneme categories (/b[schwa]/ vs. /d[schwa]/). Stimuli from different phoneme categories elicited MMNs in both the control and at-risk children, but the MMN amplitude was clearly lower in the at-risk children. In contrast, the stimuli from the same phoneme category elicited an MMN in only the children at risk for dyslexia. These results show children at risk for dyslexia to be sensitive to acoustic properties that are irrelevant in their language. Our findings thus suggest a possible cause of dyslexia in that they show 6-year-old beginning readers with at least one parent diagnosed with dyslexia to have a neural sensitivity to speech contrasts that are irrelevant in the ambient language. This sensitivity clearly hampers the development of stable phonological representations and thus leads to significant reading impairment later in life. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

There is ample evidence that individuals with dyslexia have a phonological deficit. A growing body of research also suggests that individuals with dyslexia have problems with categorical perception, as evidenced by weaker discrimination of between-category differences and better discrimination of within-category differences compared to average readers. Whether the categorical perception problems of individuals with dyslexia are a result of their reading problems or a cause has yet to be determined. Whether the observed perception deficit relates to a more general auditory deficit or is specific to speech also has yet to be determined. To shed more light on these issues, the categorical perception abilities of children at risk for dyslexia and chronological age controls were investigated before and after the onset of formal reading instruction in a longitudinal study. Both identification and discrimination data were collected using identical paradigms for speech and non-speech stimuli. Results showed the children at risk for dyslexia to shift from an allophonic mode of perception in kindergarten to a phonemic mode of perception in first grade, while the control group showed a phonemic mode already in kindergarten. The children at risk for dyslexia thus showed an allophonic perception deficit in kindergarten, which was later suppressed by phonemic perception as a result of formal reading instruction in first grade; allophonic perception in kindergarten can thus be treated as a clinical marker for the possibility of later reading problems. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

The modality learning effect proposes that learning is enhanced when information is presented in both the visual and the auditory domains (e.g. pictures and spoken information) compared with presenting information solely in the visual channel (e.g. pictures and written text). Most of the evidence for this effect comes from adults in a laboratory setting. Therefore, we tested the modality effect with 80 children in the highest grade of elementary school in a naturalistic setting. In a between-subjects design, the children either saw representational pictures with speech or representational pictures with text. Retention and transfer knowledge was tested at three moments: immediately after the intervention, one day after and after one week. The present study did not find any evidence for a modality effect in children when the lesson was learner-paced. Instead, we found a reversed modality effect directly after the intervention for retention. A reversed modality effect was also found for the transfer questions one day later. This effect was robust, even when controlling for individual differences.

Background: For pre-school children, the home literacy environment (HLE) plays an important role in the development of language and literacy skills. As there is little known about the HLE of children with intellectual disabilities (ID), the aim of the present study was to investigate the HLE of children with ID in comparison with children without disabilities. Method: Parent questionnaires concerning aspects of the HLE were used to investigate differences between 48 children with ID, 107 children without disabilities of the same chronological age and 36 children without disabilities of the same mental age (MA). Furthermore, for the children with ID, correlations were computed between aspects of the HLE and children's non-verbal intelligence, speech intelligibility, language and early literacy skills. Results and conclusions: From the results of the multivariate analyses of variance it could be concluded that the HLE of children with ID differed from that of children in the chronological age group on almost all aspects. When compared with children in the MA group, differences in the HLE remained. However, differences mainly concerned child-initiated activities and not parent-initiated activities. Correlation analyses showed that children's activities with literacy materials were positively related with MA, productive syntax and vocabulary age, and book orientation skills. Also, children's involvement during storybook reading was related with their MA, receptive language age, productive syntax and vocabulary age, book orientation and rapid naming of pictures. The amount of literacy materials parents provided was related to a higher productive syntax age and level of book orientation of the children. Parent play activities were also positively related to children's speech intelligibility. The cognitive disabilities of the children were the main cause of the differences found in the HLE between children with ID and children without disabilities. Parents also adapt their level to the developmental level of their child, which may not always be the most stimulating for the children.