Dynamic assessment of the effectiveness of digital game-based literacy training in beginning readers: a cluster randomised controlled trial.

In this article, we report on a study evaluating the effectiveness of a digital game-based learning (DGBL) tool for beginning readers of Dutch, employing active (math game) and passive (no game) control conditions. This classroom-level randomized controlled trial included 247 first graders from 16 classrooms in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The intervention consisted of 10 to 15 min of daily playing during school time for a period of up to 7 weeks. Our outcome measures included reading fluency, phonological skills, as well as purpose built in-game proficiency levels to measure written lexical decision and letter speech sound association. After an average of 28 playing sessions, the literacy game improved letter knowledge at a scale generalizable for all children in the classroom compared to the two control conditions. In addition to a small classroom wide benefit in terms of reading fluency, we furthermore discovered that children who scored high on phonological awareness prior to training were more fluent readers after extensive exposure to the reading game. This study is among the first to exploit game generated data for the evaluation of DGBL for literacy interventions.

Assessment of Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A Review/Tutorial of Objective Measurement Techniques.

Background With respect to the clinical criteria for diagnosing childhood apraxia of speech (commonly defined as a disorder of speech motor planning and/or programming), research has made important progress in recent years. Three segmental and suprasegmental speech characteristics-error inconsistency, lengthened and disrupted coarticulation, and inappropriate prosody-have gained wide acceptance in the literature for purposes of participant selection. However, little research has sought to empirically test the diagnostic validity of these features. One major obstacle to such empirical study is the fact that none of these features is stated in operationalized terms. Purpose This tutorial provides a structured overview of perceptual, acoustic, and articulatory measurement procedures that have been used or could be used to operationalize and assess these 3 core characteristics. Methodological details are reviewed for each procedure, along with a short overview of research results reported in the literature. Conclusion The 3 types of measurement procedures should be seen as complementary. Some characteristics are better suited to be described at the perceptual level (especially phonemic errors and prosody), others at the acoustic level (especially phonetic distortions, coarticulation, and prosody), and still others at the kinematic level (especially coarticulation, stability, and gestural coordination). The type of data collected determines, to a large extent, the interpretation that can be given regarding the underlying deficit. Comprehensive studies are needed that include more than 1 diagnostic feature and more than 1 type of measurement procedure.

A Standardized Protocol for Maximum Repetition Rate Assessment in Children.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Maximum repetition rate (MRR) is often used in the assessment of speech motor performance in older children and adults. The present study aimed to evaluate a standardized protocol for MRR assessment in young children in Dutch. METHODS: The sample included 1,524 children of 2-7 years old with no hearing difficulties and Dutch spoken in their nursery or primary school and was representative for children in the Netherlands. The MRR protocol featured mono-, tri-, and bisyllabic sequences and was computer-implemented to maximize standardization. RESULTS: Less than 50% of the 2-year-olds could produce >1 monosyllabic sequence correctly. Children who could not correctly produce ≥2 monosyllabic sequences could not produce any of the multisyllabic sequences. The effect of instruction ("faster" and "as fast as possible") was small, and multiple attempts yielded a faster MRR in only 20% of the cases. MRRs did not show clinically relevant differences when calculated over different numbers of repeated syllables. CONCLUSIONS: The MRR protocol is suitable for children of 3 years and older. If children cannot produce at least 2 of the monosyllabic sequences, the multisyllabic tasks should be omitted. Furthermore, all fast attempts of each sequence should be analyzed to determine the fastest MRR.

The interplay of socio-economic status represented by paternal educational level, white matter structure and reading.

A child's school achievement is influenced by environmental factors. The environmental factors, when represented by socio-economic status (SES) of the family, have been demonstrated to be related to the reading skills of a child. The neural correlates of the relation between SES and reading have been less thoroughly investigated. The present study expands current research by exploring the relation between SES, quantified by paternal educational level, reading of the offspring and the structure of white matter pathways in the left hemisphere as derived from DTI-based tractography analyses. Therefore, three dorsal white matter pathways, i.e. the long, anterior and posterior segments of the arcuate fasciculus (AF), and three ventral white matter pathways, i.e. the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and the uncinate fasciculus (UF), were manually dissected in the left hemisphere of 34 adolescents with a wide range of reading skills. The results demonstrated a relation between word reading, SES quantified by paternal educational level, and fractional anisotropy (FA) within the left dorsal AF segment and the left ventral UF. Thus, the present study proposes a relationship between paternal educational level and a specific white matter pathway that is important for reading, aiming to guide future research that can determine processes underlying this relationship.

Towards identifying dyslexia in Standard Indonesian: the development of a reading assessment battery.

With its transparent orthography, Standard Indonesian is spoken by over 160 million inhabitants and is the primary language of instruction in education and the government in Indonesia. An assessment battery of reading and reading-related skills was developed as a starting point for the diagnosis of dyslexia in beginner learners. Founded on the International Dyslexia Association's definition of dyslexia, the test battery comprises nine empirically motivated reading and reading-related tasks assessing word reading, pseudoword reading, arithmetic, rapid automatized naming, phoneme deletion, forward and backward digit span, verbal fluency, orthographic choice (spelling), and writing. The test was validated by computing the relationships between the outcomes on the reading-skills and reading-related measures by means of correlation and factor analyses. External variables, i.e., school grades and teacher ratings of the reading and learning abilities of individual students, were also utilized to provide evidence of its construct validity. Four variables were found to be significantly related with reading-skill measures: phonological awareness, rapid naming, spelling, and digit span. The current study on reading development in Standard Indonesian confirms findings from other languages with transparent orthographies and suggests a test battery including preliminary norm scores for screening and assessment of elementary school children learning to read Standard Indonesian.

Neuropsychological assessment of attention in children with spina bifida.

BACKGROUND: Children with the severe form of spina bifida (SBM: spina bifida with myelomeningocele with accompanying hydrocephalus) may manifest attention deficits, and have a similar psychological profile to children with hydrocephalus due to other etiologies. It is unclear to what extent tests to assess attention in SBM are confounded by the accompanying cognitive or visual-motor impairments. The aim of this study was to analyse attention functions by administering two different types of attention tests, one with high and the other with low cognitive and motor requirements. This enabled the possible interaction between attention and cognitive and motor impairment to be assessed. METHODS: The study group comprised 31 children with SBM with shunted hydrocephalus. Twenty children with SB-only formed a closely matched comparison group. Of these, 19 children with SBM and 18 with SB had a full-scale IQ (FSIQ) higher than 70. All had undergone spinal surgery and all children with SBM had been shunted within the first months of life. Between 6 and 15 years of age, the children were assessed on focused and sustained attention, encoding, and distractibility/impulsivity, using both traditional tests and computerized attention tests. RESULTS: Compared to the SB group, attention scores of children with SBM were lower on the traditional tests, but when interfering cognitive and visual-motor requirements were eliminated using the computerised tasks, most differences disappeared. Furthermore, in contrast to traditional attention tasks, computerized tests showed no significant correlations with IQ-scores and visual-motor skills. CONCLUSION: Assessment of attention functions in children with SBM by traditional tests may be misleading, because this paediatric population with complex cerebral malformations has difficulty with the cognitive and visual-motor requirements. To control for these interactions, the use of both traditional and computerized attention tests is recommended.