Effectiveness of a Computer-Assisted Intervention for Young Children with Attention and Reading Problems

• Published in: Journal of applied school psychology Vol. 30; no. 2; pp. 83 - 106
• Main Authors: Walcott, Christy M., Marett, Katherine, Hessel, Amanda B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 03.04.2014
• Subjects: Children; Computer Assisted Instruction; Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS); Early intervention programmes; Elementary School Students; Evidence based; Grade 1; Grade 2; inattention, reading problems, reading intervention; Instructional Effectiveness; Intervention; North Carolina; Oral Reading; Phonemes; Reading Difficulties; Reading Fluency; Reading Improvement; Reading Instruction; Segmentation; Small Group Instruction; Teaching Methods; Time on Task; Young children; North Carolina
• ISSN: 1537-7903; 1537-7911
• DOI: 10.1080/15377903.2013.874389

Children who are significantly inattentive and poor early readers require intervention, and traditional tutoring approaches may not be effective with this group. Using a single-subject, multiple-baseline-across-participants design, Study 1 examines whether a computer-assisted reading intervention increases performance for three first-grade children with teacher-rated inattention and early reading problems. Study 2 replicates this intervention using three second-grade students. The independent variable was an evidence-based computer-assisted intervention (Earobics). Dependent variables were oral reading fluency, phoneme segmentation, and attention-to-task. Results provide evidence of reading gains, suggesting moderate size effects. For all, attention-to-task was higher during the computer-assisted intervention than during small-group reading instruction. Implications for practice and future research are discussed. The use of computer-assisted interventions for children who are inattentive and poor early readers may be an effective solution to improve reading performance.