The balance model: Neuropsychological treatment of dyslexia

Abstract

This study examined whether an intervention program based on a neuropsychological approach to specific reading disability subtypes would improve overall reading ability, Subjects were middle school righthanded boys and girls who were low achieving readers. The readers were initially subtyped according to Bakker's clinical-inferential approach used with clinic children and classified as L-type dyslexic (substantive errors and excessively fast reading), P-type dyslexic (slow and laborious reading), or M-type dyslexic (a combination of both L-type and P-type dyslexia). The method of assessment was used as a pre-posttest group design. The dependent variables included a reading decoding measure, oral reading errors, and comprehension scores from the Multilevel Academic Skills Inventory (MASI), which is a reading and language battery. All three groups were receiving additional reading instruction from their school reading program. Experimental treatment occurred in two parts: Hemispheric Specific Stimulation (HSS) and Hemispheric Alluding Stimuli (HAS). When the study was concluded, a fused dichotic listening task was administered once to discern a potential relationship between the subtypes of the groups and their particular hemispheric processing capacity for language. The results revealed that the neuropsychological treatment was effective at improving reading comprehension and accuracy. Although there were perceived benefits in comprehension, no direct comprehension exercises were used in this study so the gains could have been attributed to the school reading program. There were no changes in word recognition between the pretest and the posttest. The results from the fused dichotic words task were not significant.