Researchers from the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, published a new study in 2018 which looked at whether a set of reading-related cognitive abilities predicted reading skills in Italian undergraduate students with and without Developmental Dyslexia (DD).
The decision to focus on undergraduate students was driven by the growing number of Italians with a diagnosis of learning disability (LD) who decided to study at university and enroll in LD services to receive special education aids.
As a result, 39 university students in Milan (19 diagnosed with DD and 20 without DD), aged between 19 and 27 years, underwent a number of assessments including standardised reading tests, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal working memory (WM), and rhythmic pattern discrimination tests.
The results of the RAN and verbal WM measures were found to be significantly lower in the participants with DD, but rhythmic abilities, as measured by the rhythmic discrimination task, did not differ between groups.
This research builds on a previous paper published by the same university in 2016 on ‘Rhythmic Reading Training (RRT)’, which states:
“Since music and language share common mechanisms and the core deficit underlying dyslexia has been identified in difficulties in dynamic and rapidly changing auditory information processing, it has been argued that enhancing basic musical rhythm perception skills in children with dyslexia may have a positive effect on reading abilities.”
Some preliminary test-training-retest studies showed the efficacy of RRT intervention on reading abilities of children with dyslexia.
Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash
SOURCES:
Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5977078
Bigger Better Brains: https://biggerbetterbrains.com/news-post/rhythm-and-dyslexia/
Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-32270-4_25
DETAILS:
| BENEFIT: | LITERACY |
| TARGET GROUP: | ADULTS |
| AGE: | 19-27 YEARS-OLD |
| MUSIC TYPE: | RHYTHM |
| TYPE OF STUDY: | ACADEMIC RESEARCH |
| NOs INVOLVED: | 39 |
| PERIOD OF STUDY: | UNKNOWN |
| DATE: | 2016 & 2018 |
| PLACE: | ITALY |
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