In a recent report in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Lee and Yoon reported that repeated reading had significant beneficial effects on the reading fluency of students with a reading disability. Listening to the passage first increased the benefit. Excerpt: “Reading the passage at least four times increased reading fluency more than two to three times…repetition is a critical variable, and automaticity was based on retrieval (memory) rather than adjustment of reading procedures (e.g. word decoding strategies… The listening passage preview with the proper prosody that was modeled by the teachers may have enhanced understanding of text and reduced the moderator of negative emotion (e.g. confusion, anxiety, frustration) presumed or students with RD (e.g. “with listening passage preview there is less anxiety.” N.B. Fluency practice […]
Dyslexia Journal Club – Spelling Strategies – What Does Research Say? [Premium]
In a recent paper from Montreal, research tested dyslexic students ages 9-11 to see which spelling strategies were more effective. The most common strategy children use to spell is phonological, whether they are or aren’t dyslexic. The other common strategies children use for spelling are visuol-orthographic, analogy, and backup. The phonological strategy used phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Analogy was based on the use of known words to spell that share orthographic similarities . Visuo-orthographic strategy involved visual and specific properties of words. A backup strategy was defined as using a personal mnemonic device for one specific word. In this research study, students were tested in tests that included spelling to dictation, and written narrative (summary) after being read a story. Spelling words were classified on the basis […]
Divide and Conquer: Working Memory Hacks [Premium]
“Divida et Impera.” – Julius Caesar There’s an old military strategy of Divide and Conquer that’s been in operation even before Julius Caesar’s Divida et Impera (Divide and Rule), and it turns out divide and conquer can be helpful if you’re dyslexic too. Recently, we were asked by a professional colleague about the most common cognitive pattern we see in dyslexic individuals. Verbal reasoning and not uncommonly spatial reasoning are high, but working memory and processing speed are slow. How could it be, she asked that fund of knowledge and reasoning ability are so high though working memory is much lower or even quite low? The reason there is no tight connection between these cognitive groups is that working memory is not an index of total memory (for […]
