Abstract
Defizite in der phonologischen Informationsverarbeitung werden heute als Kernsymptom der Lese-Rechtschreibstörung betrachtet. In Trainingsstudien mit betroffenen Kindern erwiesen sich Phonemwahrnehmungsfähigkeiten als trainierbar, und Programme, in denen Aufgaben zur phonologischen Bewusstheit mit der systematischen Vermittlung von Phonem-Graphem-Zuordnungen kombiniert wurden, zeigten Transfereffekte auf Lese- und Rechtschreibleistungen. Ausgehend von diesen Erkenntnissen wurde ein computerbasiertes Trainingsprogramm zur Förderung der Phonemwahrnehmung, der phonologischen Bewusstheit und der Graphem-Phonem-Zuordnungen für deutschsprachige Grundschulkinder mit Lese-Rechtschreibstörung entwickelt. Aufgrund der besonderen Relevanz der Vokallänge für die deutsche Orthographie enthält das Programm neben Aufgaben, die auf Konsonanten fokussieren, auch Vokallängenaufgaben. Bei der Konzipierung des Programms wurden etablierte, ursprünglich für andere Sprachen entwickelte Aufgaben an die deutsche Phonologie angepasst und in ein computerbasiertes Format übersetzt. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie sollte überprüft werden, ob die konstruierten Trainingsaufgaben die spezifischen Defizite von Kindern mit Lese-Rechtschreibstörung wie intendiert abbilden. Hierzu wurden leseschwache Dritt- und Viertklässler (n = 35) mit mindestens durchschnittlichen Lesern derselben Klassenstufen (n = 75; Kontrollgruppe) hinsichtlich ihrer Leistungen in den Aufgaben verglichen. Die leseschwachen Kinder zeigten in allen Aufgaben schlechtere Leistungen als die Kontrollgruppe. Die Effektstärken der Gruppenunterschiede (Cohen's d) lagen im mittleren bis hohen Bereich (0.50 – 2.19). Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass die Aufgaben des Trainingsprogramms die spezifischen Defizite leseschwacher Kinder abbilden. Ein Training mit diesen Aufgaben erscheint daher grundsätzlich sinnvoll. Die Wirkungen eines solchen Trainings auf die schriftsprachlichen Leistungen von Kindern mit Lese-Rechtschreibstörung werden in zukünftigen Studien überprüft.
Background: Deficits in phonological processing, i. e., phoneme perception, phonological awareness, verbal short-term memory, and rapid access to long-term representations of phonological word forms, constitute the core deficit of developmental dyslexia. Accordingly, improving phonological processing skills may ameliorate reading and spelling abilities in dyslexic children. Training studies in this field focused on phoneme perception and phonological awareness. Concerning phoneme perception, studies consistently revealed training-induced performance enhancements, but the extent of transfer to reading and spelling abilities is still unclear. Concerning phonological awareness, training also evokes reliable improvements, which reliably transfer to reading and spelling abilities when the training is combined with systematic phonics instruction, i. e., instruction on grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
A number of studies in which positive transfer effects were found used computer programs. These provide several advantages over conventional programs. By applying adaptive learning algorithms, they ensure schedules optimized for each individual child and provide excessive practice which improves fluency and automaticity in basic skills. Furthermore, parents or other family members can supervise a computer-based training; no professionals are required. This allows an intensive training consisting of daily sessions of 20 – 30 minutes over a period of several weeks, a schedule that has proven successful in fostering phonological skills in dyslexic children.
Taken together, a computer-based program that combines training of phoneme perception and phonological awareness with an instruction in grapheme-phoneme-mappings seems a promising approach for remediation in children with dyslexia. In the present work we present such a program which we developed for German dyslexic children. Due to the special relevance of vowel length perception for German orthography, a set of vowel length tasks was designed in addition to tasks focussing on consonants.
Aims: The program aims to foster phoneme perception, phonological awareness and grapheme-phoneme-mappings in sets of consonant and vowel length tasks. The phonological tasks implemented into the program are adaptations of tasks which have proven successful in international training studies. Tasks that were originally designed for the phonology of other languages (e. g. English or French) were adjusted to the specifics of German phonology. In addition, tasks that were originally used in the context of face-to-face-instruction had to be transformed to a computer-based training format. The current study aimed at testing whether these adaptations are suitable. A sample of poor and normal reading primary school children completed a pilot version of the computer program. If the implemented tasks really tap into poor readers' phonological deficits, significant performance differences in favor of the normal readers should be found. A further aim of the study was to collect data from a large sample of children with normal reading abilities, in order to implement performance criteria for each task into an adaptive design of the follow-up version of the training program.
Methods: Participants: Third- and fourth graders with normal and poor reading abilities were recruited from a primary school in Leipzig, Germany. In this school, children with poor reading and spelling abilities are instructed in special dyslexia classes for two years, starting at grade 3. In the dyslexia classes, children follow the normal Grade 3 curriculum, which is spread over a period of 2 years in order to provide extra training in basic reading and writing skills.
To qualify as poor readers, children had to be enrolled in a dyslexia class, and reading performance had to be more than one standard deviation below average in a standardized German reading test. To qualify as typical readers, children had to be enrolled in a regular class and had to achieve a reading score exceeding two-third of a standard deviation below average in the same test. The resulting sample consisted of 35 poor readers (17 male, mean age 9;4) with mean reading score two standard deviations below average, and 75 normal readers (30 male, mean age 9;4) with mean reading scores half a standard deviation above average.
Training program: The pilot version of the training program consisted of 17 tasks with 20 to 30 trials each. The phoneme perception tasks required discrimination and identification of stop consonants and vowel lengths in words and pseudowords (CV, VCV, CCV, VCCV for consonant tasks, CVC for vowel length tasks). Stop consonant perception was trained with a further task requiring recognition of a target pseudoword within a sequence consisting of the target and two phonological similar distractors. The phonological awareness settings comprised odd-one-out-tasks requiring to decide which one out of three words or pseudowords differed from the other ones with respect to the initial or final consonant or with respect to the vowel length, and tasks involving phoneme segmentation (i. e., counting of sounds in words, segmenting words into the constituent sounds). The consonant identification and phoneme segmentation tasks incorporated grapheme-phoneme-mappings: Once the correct phonemes were selected, the respective graphemes had to be attached to them. Graphemes and phonemes were represented on the user interface through different building blocks, with the phoneme blocks made distinguishable by pictures of common objects. The initial sound of the object's verbal label represents the phoneme (e. g, fish for /f/). Time limits were implemented in each task in order to ensure continuous and efficient training.
Procedure: Children worked individually on the tasks in small groups of up to 10 children, supervised by two research assistants. A task was finished when all trials were solved correctly. Whenever a child produced an error or exceeded the time limit, the respective trial was repeated immediately. Thus, individual children differed in the number of trials necessary to complete each task. In total, children spend 3 to 6 school lessons to complete all 17 tasks.
Results: For each child, the proportion of additional trials (errors and timeouts) needed to complete a task was computed for all 17 tasks. For example, a child who produced four errors and one timeout in a task consisting of 20 trials would achieve a score of (4 + 1)/20 = 0.25 for this particular task. Group differences were analyzed by means of t-tests and Analyses of Variance (ANOVA).
In all of the 17 tasks, poor readers showed lower performance than normal readers. All group differences proved medium to large effect sizes (Cohen's d, proposed by Cohen, 1988; medium: d ≥ 0.50; large: d > 0.80). Concerning consonant and vowel-length perception, the effect sizes of the group differences ranged from 1.3 to 1.5 and 0.73 to 0.83, respectively. Further analyses including phonological structure of the pseudowords as within-subject variable revealed that poor readers' deficits in consonant perception are especially pronounced when target consonants are embedded in consonant clusters.
Concerning phonological awareness, effect sizes for the two phoneme segmentation tasks and the odd-one-out-task requiring comparison of the initial and final sounds in three pseudowords were 0.89, 1.29, and 2.19, respectively. The poor readers' marked difficulties with the odd-one-out-task were not due to the short-term memory load involved in this task. This was shown by means of an ANOVA including Task as within-subject-factor (odd-one-task vs. consonant perception task requiring recognition of a target in a sequence of three pseudowords). Despite comparable short-term memory load, the group differences were much stronger for the odd-one-out task, as confirmed by a significant Group x Task – interaction.
Discussion: The poor readers were outperformed by the normal readers in all 17 tasks of the pilot version of the training program, with group differences of medium to large effect sizes. These results confirm that the implemented tasks tap into poor readers' phonological difficulties. More detailed comparisons of specific tasks revealed that the severity of poor readers' deficits in consonant perception is dependent on syllable structure, with consonants embedded into clusters being much harder to perceive than single consonants. Prior studies have documented that dyslexic children exhibit special difficulties in reading and spelling of consonant clusters. The current findings indicate that deficits in the perception of consonant clusters may contribute to these difficulties.
Concerning phonological awareness, poor readers exhibited particularly severe difficulties in a task requiring comparison of the initial or final sounds of three pseudowords (odd-one-out). These difficulties cannot purely be attributed to short term memory deficits, as the group differences in favor of the normal readers were much smaller in a consonant perception task involving a comparable short-term memory load. These results indicate that poor readers have special difficulties in tasks requiring both storage and processing of phonological information.
To conclude, the introduced tasks that were designed for the phonological training program seem promising in that they differentiate between normal and poor readers. Therefore, all of the tasks designed so far will be retained in the follow-up version of the program. It has to be kept in mind, however, that from the current results nothing can be inferred about the efficacy of the training in ameliorating reading and spelling abilities in dyslexic children. The evaluation of the training's efficacy is subject of a further study, which is currently conducted with a sample of 64 primary school children with dyslexia.
Literatur
(1998). Speech perception in children with specific reading difficulties (dyslexia). The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51, A, 153 – 177.
(2000). Auditory processing parallels reading abilities in adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, 6832 – 6837.
(2004). Current status of treatments for dyslexia: Critical review. Journal of Child Neurology, 19, 744 – 758.
(2002). Reliabilität, Trainierbarkeit und Stabilität auditiv diskriminativer Leistungen bei zwei computergestützten Mess- und Trainingsverfahren. Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie, 30, 261 – 270.
(1999). Auditory temporal processing impairment: Neither necessary nor sufficient for causing language impairment in children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 42, 1295 – 1310.
(2006). Deficient implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 95, 153 – 193.
(2007). Auditory processing, speech perception and phonological ability in pre-school children at high-risk for dyslexia: A longitudinal study of the auditory temporal processing theory. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1608 – 1620.
(2006). Forschungsmethoden und Evaluation für Human- und Sozialwissenschaftler. Berlin: Springer.
(1983). Categorizing sounds and learning to read – a causal connection. Nature, 301, 419 – 421.
(1990). Phonological awareness and spelling in normal children and dyslexics: The case of initial consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 156 – 178.
(2010). Die Bedeutung der Phonemdiskrimination für eine Lese-Rechtschreibstörung in den Klassenstufen eins bis sechs. Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie, 38, 439 – 447.
(1999). Phonological awareness and early reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 403 – 414.
(1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: Erlbaum.
(1976). Naming of object-drawings by dyslexic and other learning disabled children. Brain and Language, 3, 1 – 15.
(2009). Computer-based training with ortho-phonological units in dyslexia: New investigations. Dyslexia. DOI 10.1002/Dys.373.
(2001a). Systematic Phonics Instruction Helps Students Learn to Read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's Meta-Analysis. Review of educational research, 71, 393 – 447.
(2001b). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 250 – 287.
(2005). Quality of phonological representations, verbal learning and phoneme awareness in dyslexic and normal readers. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 375 – 384.
(2002): Was wird aus Achtjährigen mit einer Lese- und Rechtschreibstörung. Ergebnisse im Alter von 25 Jahren. Zeitschrift für Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie, 31, 235 – 242.
(2010). Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit und sprachlicher Kompetenzen. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
(2002). Remedial interventions for children with reading disabilies: Speech perception – an effective component in phonological training? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 334 – 342.
(2011). Developmental dyslexics show deficits in the processing of temporal auditory information in German vowel length discrimination. Reading and Writing, 24, 285 – 303.
et al. (2002). Phonological training in children with dyslexia using temporally modified speech: A three-step pilot investigation. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 37, 289 – 308.
(2003). Modeling the successes and failures of interventions for disabled readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 155 – 182.
(1994). Ameliorating early reading failure by integrating the teaching of reading and phonological skills: The Phonological Linkage Hypothesis. Child Development, 65, 41 – 57.
(2004). Explicit phoneme training combined with phonic reading instruction helps young children at risk of reading failure. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 338 – 358.
(2003). Age-related improvements in auditory temporal resolution in reading-impaired children. Dyslexia, 9, 37 – 45.
et al. (2008). Cognitive subtypes of dyslexia. Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, 68, 73 – 82.
(2009). Adaptive training leads to sustained enhancement of poor working memory in children. Developmental Science, 12, F9 – F15.
(2012). Was hilft bei der Lese-Rechtschreibstörung? Ergebnisse einer Metaanalyse zur Wirksamkeit deutschsprachiger Förderansätze. Kindheit und Entwicklung, 21, 122 – 136.
(2011). Sensitivity to structure in the speech signal by children with speech sound disorder and reading disability. Journal of Communication Disorders, 44, 294 – 314.
(2008). Combined auditory and articulatory training improves phonological deficit in children with dyslexia. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 18, 402 – 429.
(2010). Naming speed and reading: From prediction to instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 341 – 362.
(1998). Psychologie der Lese- und Schreibschwierigkeiten. Weinheim: Beltz, PVU.
(2006). Hören-Lauschen-Lernen. Sprachspiele für Vorschulkinder. 5., überarbeitete Auflage. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
(2005). Diagnostic subgroups of developmental dyslexia have different deficits in neural processing of tones and phonemes. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 56, 105 – 120.
(2003). Categorization of vowel length in German poor spellers: An orthographically relevant phonological distinction. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 523 – 538.
(2004). Effects of an audio-visual training program in dyslexic children. Dyslexia, 10, 131 – 140.
et al. (1997). Are speech perception deficits associated with developmental dyslexia? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 66, 211 – 235.
(2003). Salzburger Lese-Screening für die Klassenstufen 1 – 4 (SLS 1 – 4). Bern: Huber.
(2008). Auditory processing deficits in children with language and reading impairments: Can they (and should they) be treated? Cognition, 107, 946 – 977.
(2003). Focussing attention on decoding in children with poor reading skills: Design and preliminary test of the Word Building intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 75 – 104.
(2010). Serial and free recall in children can be improved by training: Evidence for the importance of phonological and semantic representations in immediate memory tasks. Psychological Science, 21, 1694 – 1700.
(2012): Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 322 – 352.
(2005). Discrimination training of phonemic contrasts enhances phonological processing in mainstream school children. Brain and Language, 94, 72 – 85.
(1987). Phonemic awareness and learning to read are reciprocal: A longitudinal study of first-grade children. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 283 – 319.
(2010). Quantitative Methoden Band 2: Einführung in die Statistik für Psychologen und Sozialwissenschaftler. Heidelberg: Springer.
(2004). Revisiting Snodgrass and Vanderwart's object pictorial set: The role of surface detail in basic-level object recognition. Perception, 33, 217 – 236.
(2001). Serial recall and nonword repetition in reading disabled children. Reading and Writing, 14, 379 – 394.
(2003). Auditory processing in dyslexia and specific language impairment: is there a deficit? What is its nature? Does it explain anything? Journal of Phonetics, 31, 509 – 529.
(2011). Computer-assisted remedial reading intervention for school beginners at risk for reading disability. Child Development, 82, 1013 – 1028.
(2008). Working memory deficits in children with specific learning disorders. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 41, 514 – 523.
(2012). Spanish dyslexic spelling abilities: The case of consonant clusters. Journal of Research in Reading, 35, 169 – 182.
(2010). Reading fluency and speech perception speed of beginning readers with persistent reading problems: The perception of initial stop consonants and consonant clusters. Annals of Dyslexia, 60, 151 – 174.
(1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Learning and Memory, 6, 174 – 215.
(1981). Phonemic deficits in developmental dyslexia. Psychological Research, 43, 219 – 234.
(2011). Evidence-based interventions for reading and language difficulties: Creating a virtuous circle. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 1 – 23.
(2008). Phonological working memory in German children with poor reading and spelling abilities. Dyslexia, 14, 271 – 290.
(2006). Does successful training of temporal processing of sound and phoneme stimuli improve reading and spelling? European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 15, 19 – 29.
(2011). A systematic meta-analytic review of evidence for the effectiveness of the “Fast ForWord” language intervention program. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 224 – 245.
(1980). Auditory temporal perception, phonics, and reading disabilities in children. Brain and Language, 9, 182 – 198.
(2000). Experimental studies of language learning impairments: From research to remediation. In D.B. Bishop & L.B. Leonard (Eds.), Speech and language impairments in children. Hove: Psychology Press.
(2000). Linguistische und psycholinguistische Grundlagen der Orthografie: Die Schrift und das Schreibenlernen. In R. Valtin (Hrsg.), Rechtschreiben lernen in den Klassen 1 – 6. Grundlagen und didaktische Hilfen. Grundschulverband – Arbeitskreis Grundschule e. V. Frankfurt am Main.
(2013). Auditory processing interventions and developmental dyslexia: a comparison of phonemic and rhythmic approaches. Reading and Writing, 26, 139 – 161.
(2006). A systematic review of the research literature on the use of phonics in the teaching of reading and spelling. Nottingham: DfES Publications.
(2002). The Prevention of Reading Difficulties. Journal of School Psychology, 40, 7 – 26.
(2006). Recent discoveries from research on remedial interventions for children with dyslexia. In M. Snowling & C. Hulme (Hrsg.). The Science of Reading: A Handbook (S. 521 – 537). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
(1995). Computers as aids in the prevention and remediation of reading disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 18, 76 – 87.
(2000). The foundations of literacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 89 – 92.
(2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 2 – 40.
et al. (2006). The role of sensorimotor impairments in dyslexia: a multiple case study of dyslexic children. Developmental Science, 9, 237 – 255.
(2000). Deficits in phoneme segmentation are not the core problem of dyslexia: Evidence from German and English children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 243 – 262.
(2000). Individual differences in gains from computer-assisted remedial reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 77, 197 – 235.
(2009). Speech-perception-in-noise-deficits in dyslexia. Developmental Science, 12, 732 – 745.
