In this research, a meta-analysis of 37 studies on vocabulary interventions from pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 was conducted to provide a fuller understanding of the impact of vocabulary on comprehension. Vocabulary instruction was found to be effective for increasing student abilities in comprehending text with custom measures less effective for standardised measures. Students with reading difficulties benefited more than three times as much as students without reading problems on comprehension measures.

Authors: Amy M. Elleman, Endia J. Lindo, Paul Morphy, & Donald L. Compton

Source: Elleman, A.M., Lindo, E.J., Morphy, P., & Compton, D.L. (2009). The impact of vocabulary instruction on passage-level comprehension of school-age children: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 2(1), 1-44, DOI: 10.1080/19345740802539200

In this research, a meta-analysis of 37 studies on vocabulary interventions from pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 was conducted to provide a fuller understanding of the impact of vocabulary on comprehension. Vocabulary instruction was found to be effective for increasing student abilities in comprehending text with custom measures less effective for standardised measures. Students with reading difficulties benefited more than three times as much as students without reading problems on comprehension measures.

• The ability to understand and gain knowledge from text is a fundamental skill required in every school subject and in everyday life.
• Large numbers of school-age children experience significant problems in learning to read.
• The knowledge hypothesis states that words are part of larger knowledge structures. Further, these knowledge structures (not the words per se) affect a person’s comprehension.
• The aptitude hypothesis postulates there is no causal relationship between vocabulary and comprehension.
• According to the reciprocal hypothesis, most of children’s growth in vocabulary occurs incidentally, not through instruction or conversation. This learning occurs incrementally over time through multiple exposure to words in varied contexts.
• While the two studied hypotheses provide a viable explanation for the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, they are not mutually exclusive and each probably provides a partial explanation.

The study

The present meta-analysis asks the following questions concerning comprehension outcomes for students from pre-Kindergarten through to Grade 12:

1. Does vocabulary instruction affect passage-level comprehension?
2. What methodological characteristics are associated with effect size and need to be controlled to avoid confounding of the findings?
3. Do the same factors that affect comprehension influence vocabulary improvements in the same way?
4. Are the effects in vocabulary associated with the effects in comprehension?

Data

This meta-analysis included 37 articles that met the eligibility criteria. All eligible reports were coded for effect size and study characteristics. The d statistic was used as an effect size, which was calculated by taking the difference between the intervention group and the control group means and dividing by the pooled standard deviations of the means.

Summary

• Although a positive overall effect of vocabulary training on comprehension assessed with custom measures was found, the effect for standardised measures was minimal.
• The overall positive effects found for custom measures suggest that vocabulary training increases comprehension for all students.
• Students identified as having reading problems benefitted more than students with no indicated reading problem by a factor of three.
• Students with reading difficulties made equivalent improvements in vocabulary knowledge as those students without reading difficulties.
• If students learn target words contained in the text, it can free up cognitive resources that can be allocated for the higher level processes of integrating text.
• Improvements in comprehension may be due to increased knowledge of the topics and the words learned.
• Regardless of the type of vocabulary instruction used, the same effects were produced on comprehension.
• Studies that utilised higher levels of discussion were associated with larger effects for vocabulary outcomes.
• Practitioners should use high levels of discussion to promote vocabulary development.

The present study found that action gamers have better lane-keeping and visuomotor-control skills compared to non-action gamers. Action gaming generally improves the responsiveness of the sensorimotor system to input error signals. The findings support a causal link between action gaming and enhancement of visuomotor control, with the suggestion that action video games can be beneficial training tools.

Authors: Li Li, Rongrong Chen, & Jing Chen

Source: Li, L., Chen, R., & Chen, J. (2016). Playing action video games improves visuomotor control. Psychological Science, 27(8) 1092–1108, DOI: 10.1177/0956797616650300

The present study found that action gamers have better lane-keeping and visuomotor-control skills than non-action gamers. For this study, non-action gamers were trained with both action and nonaction video games. After playing a driving or first-person-shooter video game for 5 to 10 hours, their visuomotor control improved significantly. Non-action gamers displayed no such improvement after playing a non-action game. Action gaming generally improves the responsiveness of the sensorimotor system to input error signals, and the findings support a causal link between action gaming and enhancement in visuomotor control. It is further suggested that action video games can be beneficial training tools.

• Playing action video games has been shown to result in a wide range of benefits for both basic and higher-level visual functions, such as contrast sensitivity, motion-direction discrimination, visuospatial resolution, visuospatial attention, and top-down guidance in visual searches.
• Gamers have enhanced eye-hand coordination and faster reaction times.

The study

The present study consists of four experiments:

1. How do people who do/do not frequently play action video games perform on a common driving task (lane keeping)?
2. Develop a visuomotor-control task for specifically examining visuomotor control underlying driving in action gamers
3. Non-action gamers played either a driving game or non-action game
4. Non-action gamers played either a first-person-shooter game or non-action game

Participants

Experiment 1 involved 12 action gamers and 12 non-action gamers. Action gamers reported playing ≥5 hours per week, while non-action gamers reported playing <1 hour per month.

Experiment 2 involved 14 action gamers and 14 non-action gamers.

Experiment 3 involved 12 non-action gamers (who were randomly assigned to either action group and trained to play a driving game) and a control group (who were trained to play a non-action game). Training consisted of playing the video game for 10 sessions, each lasting 1 hour.

Experiment 4 involved 16 non-action gamers who were randomly assigned to action and control groups. The action group played a first-person-shooter game.

Summary

• With action gamers, their precision error was 57% smaller, their response amplitude was 24% larger, and their response delay was 29% shorter compared to non-action gamers.
• Action gamers had superior performance on the visuomotor-control task compared to non-action gamers.
• Different types of action video games have both common and different effects on the sensorimotor system.
• The findings of the current study support the claim that easily accessible action video games can be cost-effective training tools to help people improve the essential visuomotor-control skills used for driving.

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of motor skills training on arithmetical abilities among 80 Grade 1 students. One result indicated that the intervention group (who received training in fine motor skills for 10 min) exhibited greater improvements in performance on an arithmetic task and a pegboard compared to the active control group (who read their favourite book for 10 min).

Authors: Atsushi Asakawa, Taro Murakami, & Shinichiro Sugimura

Source: Asakawa, A.; Murakami, T.; Sugimura, S. (2019). Effect of fine motor skills training on arithmetical ability in children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16(3), 290-301, DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2017.1385454

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of motor skills training on arithmetical abilities among 80 Grade 1 students. One result demonstrated that the intervention group (who received training in fine motor skills for 10 min) achieved improved performance on an arithmetic task and a pegboard compared to the active control group (who read their favourite book for 10 min). These findings suggest that the training presented in this study is an appropriate programme for improving fine motor skills and that fine motor skills have a significant influence on arithmetical abilities in children (with a medium effect size).

• When learning arithmetic at an early stage, children tend to use their fingers to represent and count numbers.
• Based on the embodiment theory, claims have been made that finger movements are related to arithmetic development.

Possible explanations for the link between arithmetical abilities and fine motor skills:

• Brain areas governing these two abilities are close to each other; hence, they might exhibit similar developmental patterns.
• The executive function might mediate the relationships.
• Numerical operation is not merely abstract thinking—it is also based on physical, embodied experiences.

The study

The purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of fine motor skills training on arithmetical ability in children in the first grade of primary school.

Hypothesis:

• The training programme in this study is only expected to influence fine motor skills and arithmetical abilities, not finger gnosis.

Participants

The study involved 80 Grade 1 students, who were randomly assigned to either a fine motor training group or a control group. In the intervention group, fine motor skills training was conducted instead of a reading activity (which was continued in the control group) for 3 weeks after pre-test.

Fine motor skills training

• Bead stringing: children were required to string as many beads as possible with one hand at a time for one minute.
• Finger opposition: children performed finger opposition movements (thumb to index, medium, ring, and little fingers) with each hand five times.
• Pulling each finger: children placed their hands in front of their chest with the right palm facing them and left palm facing away. They clasped the fingers of both hands together and pulled their left hand towards their right side while pulling their right hand to the left.

Summary

• The arithmetic scores of the fine motor training group showed improvement after the 3 week intervention period, whereas those in the reading group showed no improvement.
• It appears that fine motor skills have a significant influence on arithmetical abilities (given the medium effect size).
• For the first time, the present study has provided evidence suggesting there may be a causal relationship between fine motor skills and arithmetical abilities.
• Fine motor skills training does not improve finger gnosis.
• According to the ‘brain’ view, the brain areas underlying both finger movement and arithmetical ability are close to each other.
• According to the ‘mediation’ view (which proposes that executive function mediates the relationship between fine motor skills and arithmetical ability), it is possible that arithmetic abilities develop because of improvements in executive function through fine motor skills training.
• According to the ‘embodiment’ view, numerical operations are not merely abstract thinking—they are also based on physical, embodied experiences.
• The results cannot confirm whether the mediation or embodiment view best fits the results.

The present study assessed the impact of a teacher-implemented visuomotor intervention programme of teaching cursive letter knowledge to children aged 5 years. While there was greater improvement in letter recognition following the visuomotor intervention, results were mixed for letter handwriting.

Authors: Florence Bara & Nathalie Bonneton-Botté

Source: Bara, F. & Bonneton-Botté, N. (2018). Learning letters with the whole body: Visuomotor versus visual teaching in kindergarten. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 125(1), 190-207. Doi: 10.1177/0031512517742284

The present study assessed the impact of a teacher-implemented visuomotor intervention programme for teaching cursive letter knowledge to children aged 5 years. A programme in which letters were explored with the arm and whole body was compared with a typical visual training programme. There was greater improvement in letter recognition following the visuomotor intervention although results were mixed for letter handwriting. This indicates a combination of both visuomotor and visual training might be the most efficient method.

• Letter knowledge acquisition is an important component of a child’s literacy development and is one of the strongest predictors of subsequent reading and spelling abilities.
• When learning involves both perceptual and motor systems, there is an interaction between perception and action.
• Visual representations of letters are linked to motor representations through handwriting.
• Related to perception and the motor interaction process, some studies with young children have shown that overt (rather than just passive) motor action further enhances letter perception.
• Formal pencil-and-paper writing depends upon an accurate visual representation of the letters, a degree of coordination between visual perception and finger movements, and sufficiently developed fine motor skills.
• Impaired handwriting is frequently associated with developmental coordination disorder. In particular, it has been closely linked to fine motor manipulative disability and to coordination problems.
• An efficient letter knowledge intervention must include both handwriting practice and direct instruction in letter knowledge.

The study

This study investigated a novel kindergarten-level multisensory teaching intervention for letter knowledge, whereby alphabet letters are taught through gross motor movements—pupils are asked to produce letters with their arms or whole body and without using a pencil. As gross motor development occurs earlier than fine motor development, gross motor movements should be particularly helpful for young children or those with disabilities.

Hypotheses:

• A whole-body visuomotor training programme would be more efficient than a visual letter exploration programme.
• An improvement in hand-writing quality and fluency can be expected.

Participants

The study involved 72 normally-developing kindergarten pupils (aged 5 years) living in France, who were assigned to either the whole-body visuomotor or visual exploration training programme.

Interventions

• The pupils were divided into groups of 6–10 and underwent a 45 min session in which two letters were successively learned.
• All children completed six sessions over six weeks.
• The 12 letters used for training sessions and their order of presentation were chosen according to their frequency in the French language and because they represented different types of letters.
• Each visuomotor and visual training session started by giving the name and the sound of the letter and ended with letter-recognition and letter-handwriting tasks.
• The visual training sessions included visual exploration, where a letter was displayed on the board and pupils were asked to draw the letter with their eyes.
• Whole body visuomotor training sessions included exploration with the arm (where the teacher drew the letter in the air with their arm and pupils were required to repeat this action) and exploration with the body (where the letter was drawn on the ground and each pupil walked round the outline). These exercises initially conducted with eyes open, then with eyes shut.

Summary

• The main finding was that letter recognition improved more following the visuomotor training programme than with the visual training programme. This implies a strong relationship between the visual and the motor systems in reading and writing processes.
• Regarding the kinematic measures, the visuomotor training programme only had a positive effect on stroke direction. It is interesting to note that a gross motor movement can transfer to a fine motor movement with the hand.
• An unexpected result was that handwriting fluency improved more following the visual training programme than with the visuomotor training programme.
• The present study provides support for a gross-motor visuomotor intervention to promote such specific components of letter learning as improving letter recognition and improving two aspects of letter writing (stroke direction and overall quality). It should be noted that handwriting speed and fluency improved more with a visual instructional method.
• A question emerges as to whether the combined use of visuomotor training and visual letter exploration might prove to be a more effective teaching method than either technique used alone.

In this study, a software application for elementary school-age children was specifically developed with the aim of improving the operational efficiency of working memory. Short-term effects of the programme could not be proven and only the visuo-spatial Corsi block span exhibited a training effect over a period of three months.

Authors: Claudia Maehler, Christina Joerns, & Kirsten Schuchardt

Source: Maehler, C.; Joerns, C.; Schuchardt, K. (2019). Training working memory of children with and without dyslexia. Children, 6(47), doi: 10.3390/children6030047

A software application for elementary school-age children was specifically developed for this study, with the aim of improving the operational efficiency of working memory. The phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and the central executive were trained in 18 sessions over a period of 6 weeks. The trained test group was composed of Grade 3 students, of which 43 were and 27 were not affected by dyslexia. The untrained control group comprised 41 Grade 6 students with dyslexia and 28 without dyslexia. Short-term effects of the programme could not be proven and only the visuo-spatial Corsi block span exhibited a training effect over a period of three months.

• Reading problems become evident from the start of a child’s school career, manifesting as difficulties in reciting the alphabet or through delayed (or incorrect) character recognition.
• While affected children improve overall in their literary language performances, they continually lag behind compared to unimpaired fellow students.
• It is no longer controversial that dyslexia constitutes a phonological information processing disorder.
• Dyslexia is accompanied by working memory deficits, particularly in the phonological loop.

The study

The present study evaluates the long-term effects of a training programme. The short-term effects immediately following training sessions have already been reported. The findings substantiate performance improvements in the visuo-spatial sketchpad and central executive subsystems for the group of typically-developing third-grade students, and only in the central executive for the children with dyslexia.

Research questions:

• Can training effects be maintained over a longer period or could they occur after a certain period of time?
• Can dyslexic children with notably poor working memory performance benefit from the training (show a long-term effect) with regard to their working memory performance?

Participants

Participants in the study were 139 Grade 3 students from both rural and urban areas. They were assigned to four groups according to whether they had dyslexia and whether they participated in training. The groups were dyslexia trained (n = 43), dyslexia untrained (n = 41), control group trained (n = 27), and control group untrained (n = 28). All children were examined within a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up design, while school performance, intelligence, and working memory capacity were assessed at pre-test and working memory performance was tested at follow-up.

Training

A computer game training-method named AGENT 8-1-0 comprised of 18 training sessions. Five working memory tasks were assigned in each session: two games for improving the phonological loop’s capacity, one game for the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and two games for stimulation of the central executive.

Summary

• Neither dyslexia-unaffected nor affected children experienced long-term improvement in working memory performance—only the visuo-spatial Corsi block yielded substantial training results.
• For children with dyslexia, and especially disadvantageous initial working memory performance regarding the three subsystems of working memory, no performance increase through training could be determined.
• Very intensive practice (tri-weekly sessions of 45 minutes over a course of 6 weeks) does not enable the children to process and memorise greater quantities of information over a longer period.
• Within the present controversy over the trainability of working memory, the results seem to support the sceptics regarding the efficacy of such endeavors.
• If increases in capacity through memory expansion or improved automatic processing appear to be impossible, an intervention must focus on the remaining determinants of memory capacity (especially on memory strategies and meta-memory).
• For children with dyslexia, the recommendation of a functional exercise treatment for reading and writing remains valid. Specifically, this should include applied strategies and self-monitoring of the individual reading and writing processes.

Direct training on working memory (WM) tasks and practicing certain skills that can impact indirectly on WM (such as physical activity, fantastic play, and inhibition) both produced improvement on WM tasks, with some benefits for near-transfer activities. The common ingredient across effective interventions was the executive-loaded nature of the trained task.

Authors: Anita Rowe, Jill Titterington, Joni Holmes, Lucy Henry, & Laurence Taggart

Source: Rowe, A., Titterington, J., Holmes, J., Henry, L., & Taggart, L. (2019). Interventions targeting working memory in 4-11 year olds within their everyday contexts: A systematic review. Developmental Review, 52, 1-23, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2019.02.001

The aim of this review is to conduct a systematic examination of the effectiveness of non-computerised interventions with 4–11 year olds to identify the following: their effects on working memory (WM); whether benefits extend to near- and far-transfer measures; if improvements are sustained over time; the active ingredients; and the optimum dosage. Both direct training on WM tasks and practicing certain skills that may impact indirectly on WM (such as physical activity, fantastic play, and inhibition) produced improvement on WM tasks, with some benefits for near-transfer activities. The common ingredient across effective interventions was the executive-loaded nature of the trained task.

• Working memory is the ability to hold in mind and mentally manipulate information over short periods in the face of distraction.
• The capacity of WM is limited, it develops more in the first 10 years of life than at any other time, and it reaches adult capacity levels around the age of 14 years.
• Children with poor WM struggle to cope with the heavy WM loads of the classroom, which can result in them failing to complete individual learning activities. Moreover, as problems accumulate, this leads to poor academic achievement.

Effectiveness research of WM training:

• Theoretical perspective: the goal has been to understand the underlying cognitive processes by exploring the extent to which training can improve WM and by identifying variables that moderate or mediate the effects of training and transfer to other cognitive functions.
• Applied perspective: the focus has been on investigating the impact of WM training on outcomes relating to real-world skills (such as attention, language, and academic achievement).

The study

The current review is the first to focus specifically on the effectiveness of non-computerised WM interventions applied within children’s everyday contexts. The aims of the review are to map the types of interventions that have been implemented with young children in everyday contexts and examine the theoretical framework/s used to underpin them.

Research questions:

1. What types of WM interventions are implemented and what is their theoretical underpinning?
2. What are the effects of the interventions on WM and what aspects of WM (if any) are impacted?
3. Do WM improvements (if any) extend to similar untrained WM tasks (near-transfer effects) or dissimilar abilities linked with WM (far-transfer effects)?
4. Are WM improvements durable over time?
5. What are the active ingredients and the optimum dosage of effective interventions?

Eligibility criteria of the studies:

• conducted with children aged 4–11 years
• implemented any intervention that targets WM and is applied within children’s everyday contexts
• employed a randomised controlled, quasi-experimental, or single case experimental design
• included at least one pre- and post-intervention measure of WM

Summary

• The first research objective was to identify both the types of WM interventions implemented and their theoretical underpinnings. The range of intervention approaches included the following: adapting the environment to reduce WM loads; direct WM training without strategy instruction; direct WM training with strategy instruction; and training skills that may indirectly impact on WM. Many of the studies lacked a clear theoretical account of why the intervention should impact WM.
• The second research question was to identify the effects of interventions. A significant outcome of this review is that WM skills can be altered through diverse interventions, particularly in relation to verbal WM skills (which were more frequently measured than the visuospatial domain). Further, it would appear that ELWM skills are more amenable to change compared to STM skills.
• For the third and fourth research questions (identify any near- and far-transfer effects and the durability of WM improvements over time), the evidence was limited because few studies measured these outcomes. Preliminary evidence suggests that certain direct and indirect WM tasks have the potential to produce near-transfer effects on similar WM tasks and far-transfer effects on areas such as reading comprehension, numeracy skills, attention and behaviour.
• The final research question concerned the active ingredients and optimum dosage requirements for WM interventions. The most effective tasks were executive-loaded, meaning they tap into attentional resources under executive control (such as listening recall, odd one out, backward digit recall, verbal and visuospatial dual tasks, and word list updating). Of the indirect WM tasks, cognitively-demanding physical activity, fantastical play, and inhibition training are suggested as being beneficial to ELWM. The optimum dosage required to produce training effects remains uncertain because dosage variables were often unreported or varied significantly across studies. However, relatively short interventions of 5–6 weeks total duration were shown to be effective.

The purpose of this literature review was to examine the characteristics, outcomes, and quality of multicomponent reading interventions for students with intellectual disability (ID). Findings indicate that students with ID who were exposed to multicomponent reading programmes significantly improved their reading skills compared to their peers with ID who received traditional sight word instruction and their previous reading performance.

Authors: Kemal Afacan, Kimber L. Wilkerson, & Andrea L. Ruppar

Source: Afacan, K., Wilkerson, K.L., & Ruppar, A.L. (2018). Multicomponent reading interventions for students with intellectual disability. Remedial and Special Education, 39(4), 229-242. Doi: 10.1177/0741932517702444

Reading instruction for students with ID has traditionally focused on single skill instruction such as sight word reading. The purpose of this literature review was to examine the characteristics, outcomes, and quality of multicomponent reading interventions for students with ID. Findings indicate that students with ID who were exposed to multicomponent reading programmes significantly improved their reading skills compared to their peers with ID who received traditional sight word instruction and their previous reading performance. This literature review highlights effective strategies used to provide multicomponent reading instruction to students with ID.

• Compared to students receiving services in other disability categories and to their peers without disabilities, students with ID usually have less well-developed reading skills.
• Four out of five students with ID do not even achieve minimum levels of proficiency in reading, particularly in the areas of contextualised word recognition, narrative reading comprehension, phonemic awareness, and writing vocabulary.
• Only 9% of students with disabilities and 40% of students without disabilities perform at proficient (or above) levels in Grade 8 reading.
• Results from a meta-analysis (Edmonds et al. 2009) of 13 studies suggested that student comprehension skills significantly improved if they received the following: a) targeted reading instruction in comprehension, b) instruction in word reading strategies, or c) multicomponent reading instruction.
• The term multicomponent refers to a type of instruction that includes at least two of the five components of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
• Students with ID educated in general education settings outperform students placed in self-contained classrooms in their use of literacy skills, independent living, and social and emotional skills.

The study

The purpose of this review was to examine the characteristics, outcomes, and quality of multicomponent reading interventions for students with ID.

Research questions:

1. What are the characteristics of multicomponent reading interventions for student with ID, and what are the characteristics of the students who have participated in these studies?
2. What teaching strategies have been effective when implementing multicomponent reading interventions for students with ID?
3. What is the overall quality of multicomponent reading intervention studies?

Seven articles met the inclusion criteria, which were then reviewed and coded according to their descriptive characteristics and methodological soundness.

Implications

• Six of the seven studies demonstrated that multicomponent reading interventions were associated with improved reading skills for students with ID.
• Both the duration of interventions and student IQs affected literacy acquisition. If students had a lower IQ level, the multicomponent intervention needed to be delivered over a more extended period of time and with greater intensity.
• Different students may need different amounts of time to respond to multicomponent interventions.
• It is possible to integrate several evidence-based strategies such as direct instruction, time delay, repeated trials, and read aloud into a multicomponent programme.
• Providing phonemic awareness instruction in early grades is vital for the reading development of students with ID because they do not easily develop phonemic awareness skills.
• Research on multicomponent reading instruction should be extended to general education (inclusive) classrooms in which students with ID are taught alongside students without disabilities.

In this review, studies that focused on the implementation of phonics based reading interventions for students with intellectual disability (ID) were examined to determine certain factors, such as what type of settings are typically used and what type of interventions are being implemented. Results indicate that students with ID continue to respond to phonics based reading interventions and there is an increase in published studies involving phonics based reading interventions for students with ID.

Author: David R. Hill

Source: Hill, D.R. (2016). Phonics based reading interventions for students with intellectual disability: A systematic literature review. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 4(5), 205-214. Doi: 10.11114/jets.v4i5.1472

For students with ID, teachers require interventions that are simple and efficient and can be implemented in the classroom. In this review, studies that focused on the implementation of phonics based reading interventions for students with ID were examined to determine the salient factors, such as what types of settings are typically used and what types of intervention are being implemented. Results indicate that students with ID continue to respond to phonics based reading interventions and there has been an increase in published studies involving phonics based reading interventions for students with ID.

• The emphasis and methods of reading instruction for students with ID have changed over the past several years.
• The initial focus was on teaching functional sight words to enhance daily living skills for students with ID.
• The mode of instruction primarily involved drill and practice exercises that only targeted word identification and other isolated reading skills.
• While students have learned to identify words, they have experienced great difficulty in reading connected text.
• Research focusing on phonics based reading interventions for students with ID is increasing. Moreover, the findings from two reviews are encouraging and provide support for the use of phonics based instruction for students with ID.
• Conners (1992) concluded that children with moderate ID respond to various forms of phonics instruction.
• Joseph and Seery (2004) concluded that some students with ID are capable of generalising acquired phonetic analysis skills.

The purpose of this review was to update prior reviews and examine studies that have implemented phonics based reading interventions to students with ID to answer the following questions:

1. With whom and in what types of educational settings has phonics instruction been evaluated?
2. Which approaches to phonics instruction have been examined since the last review?
3. How effective are explored phonics interventions for students with ID?
4. Is there evidence for an increased focus on phonics instruction for students with ID since the previous reviews?

In total, 11 articles met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed. In the included articles, Ns varied from 3 to 93 and the subjects ranged from kindergarten age to 15-year-olds.

Interventions used:

• One intervention targeted concepts of print, phonological and phonemic awareness, oral language, letter knowledge, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
• An Early Literacy Skills Builder (ELSB) intervention targeted vocabulary, comprehension, phonemic awareness and early phonics skills.
• Corrective Reading Program Decoding A is an established, systematic, explicit reading programme with a focus on decoding skills.
• The synthetic phonics intervention consisted of participants learning individual letter sounds and how to blend them to make words.
• The analogy phonics intervention consisted of participants learning sounds of common consonants and common ‘rimes’ and combining them to read words. Participants were asked to practice reading the words and saying the letter sounds before attempting to match pictures with the sounds/words.
• Simultaneous prompting involves the simultaneous delivery of the controlling prompt and the instructional cue.

Implications

• Reported results from the 11 studies reviewed indicated varying degrees of reading improvements as a result of their respective reading interventions. Further, they provided more evidence supporting the efficacy of phonics based interventions for students with ID.
• All studies used a systematic and explicit approach to instruction.
• Interventions were implemented either one-to-one or in a small groups, with each session lasting an average of 32.5 minutes.
• Further examination of the effects of letter-sound correspondence, letter groups, and syllables on reading instruction with students with ID are encouraged.

In this monograph, 10 learning techniques are discussed in detail and recommendations about their relative utility are offered. The techniques are as follows: elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarisation, highlighting (or underlining), keyword mnemonics, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice.

Authors: John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, & Daniel T. Willingham

Source: Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K.A., Marsh, E.J., Nathan, M.J., & Willingham, D.T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58, DOI: 10.1177/1529100612453266

Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. In this monograph, 10 learning techniques are discussed in detail and recommendations about their relative utility are offered. The techniques are elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarisation, highlighting (or underlining), keyword mnemonics, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, it was evaluated whether their benefits generalise across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks.

• Simple techniques are available that teachers and students can use to improve student learning and achievement. Hence, it is surprising that teachers have not been told about these techniques and many students are not using them.
• Some effective techniques are underutilised because teachers do not learn about them (hence students do not use them). This is despite evidence suggesting that the techniques could benefit student achievement with little added effort.
• Some learning techniques that are popular and often used by students are relatively ineffective.
• Some techniques (such as self-testing and distributed practice) have been chosen for this study because an initial survey of the literature indicated they could improve student success across a wide range of conditions.
• Some techniques (such as rereading and highlighting) were included in the study because students report using them frequently.
• The choices were limited to techniques that could be implemented by students without assistance.
• The review of each learning technique describes how it can be used, its effectiveness for producing long-term retention and comprehension, and its breadth of efficacy across the categories of listed variables (materials, learning conditions, student characteristics, and criterion tasks).

Evaluation of the learning techniques

• Each technique is assessed in terms of its relative utility: low, moderate, or high
• Although a technique could be designated low utility because its effects are limited to a small subset of materials that students need to learn, it could be useful in some cases and adopted in appropriate contexts. However, relative to the other techniques, it would be considered low in utility because of its limited generalisability.
• A technique could receive a low or moderate utility rating if it showed promise but lacked sufficient evidence to support confidence in assigning a higher utility assessment.

Self-explanation

What it is and why it should work?

• The core component of self-explanation involves students explaining an aspect of their processing during learning, such as by asking themselves ‘What does the statement mean?’ or ‘Is there anything I still don’t understand?’.
• Self-explanation can enhance learning by supporting the integration of new information with prior knowledge.

How general are the effects?

• Self-explanation has been found effective when accompanied by either direct instruction or discovery learning.
• Self-explanation effects have been exhibited by with both younger and older learners.
• One of the strengths of self-explanation literature is that effects have been shown across different materials within a task domain and across several different task domains.
• Self-explanation has been shown to support many kinds of logic puzzles and mathematics problems, has helped younger learners to overcome various kinds of misconceptions, and has improved their understanding of false belief, number conservation, and principles of balance.
• Self-explanation appears to be broadly applicable.
• Studies involving text learning have also shown the effects of self-explanation on measures of comprehension.
• Studies have shown self-explanation effects on near-transfer tests, in which students are asked to solve problems that have the same (but not identical) structure as practice problems.
• Self-explanation effects on far-transfer tests have been demonstrated for the solving of mathematics problems and pattern learning.

Issues for implementation

• A particular strength of the self-explanation strategy is its broad applicability across a range of tasks and content domains.
• Most students can profit from self-explanation with minimal training.
• Some students may require more instruction to implement self-explanation successfully. Thus, the benefit of self-explanation might be enhanced by teaching students how to implement the self-explanation technique effectively.
• Self-explanation was rated as having moderate utility.

Highlighting and underlining

What it is and why it should work?

• Highlighting and underlining typically appeal to students because they are simple to use, do not entail training, and do not require students to invest much time beyond that already required for reading the material.
• Reading marked text promotes subsequent memory of the marked material.
• Actively selecting information should benefit memory more than simply reading marked text.
• While marked text draws reader attention, additional processing should be required if the reader has to decide which material is most important. Such decisions require the reader to think about the meaning of the text and how its different pieces relate to each other.
• The quality of the highlighting is probably crucial to whether it helps students to learn.

How general are the effects?

• Prior knowledge might moderate the effectiveness of highlighting.
• Mainly in the studies reviewed, it was determined that highlighting did not improve learning.

Issues for implementation

• Given students’ enthusiasm for highlighting and underlining, discovering fail-proof ways of ensuring this technique is used effectively might be easier than convincing students to abandon it entirely in favour of other techniques.
• Highlighting and underlining is rated to have low utility.
• It can help when students have the knowledge needed to highlight more effectively or when texts are difficult. However, highlighting can actually hurt performance on higher-level tasks that require inference making.

Imagery use for text learning

What it is and why it should work?

• When students read text, they imagine the content of each paragraph using simple and clear mental images.
• Developing images can enhance one’s mental organisation or integration of information in the text. Moreover, idiosyncratic images of particular referents in the text could also enhance learning.
• Using prior knowledge to generate a coherent representation of a narrative may enhance a student’s general understanding of the text.
• The literature review suggests that the effects of using mental imagery to learn from text may be rather limited and not robust.

How general are the effects?

• Imagery has more benefits among students who have listened to texts compared to students who have read them.
• In some studies, students’ spontaneous use of imagery in control conditions was deemed partly responsible for the failure of imagery to benefit performance in some cases. However, this has not been quantified.
• Despite the promise of imagery, the patchwork of inconsistent effects for Grade 4 students has been replicated with students of other ages.
• While Grade 3 students have been shown to benefit from using imagery, younger students do not appear to benefit from attempting to generate mental images when listening to a story.
• Although imagery instructions can boost performance, sometimes they have no effect.
• In general, imagery instructions do not tend to enhance students’ understanding or application of the content of a text.

Issues for implementation

• The majority of studies have examined the influence of imagery by using relatively brief instructions that encouraged students to generate images of text content while studying.
• Imagery can improve students’ learning of text materials and imagery production and is more broadly applicable than keyword mnemonics.
• The benefits of imagery are largely constrained to imagery-friendly materials and memory tests.
• The use of imagery for learning text is rated as low utility.

Practice testing

What it is and why it should work?

• Testing is viewed by many students as an undesirable necessity of education. This is unfortunate because it overshadows the fact that testing also improves learning.
• The century of research on practice testing demonstrates the broad generalisability of the benefits of practice testing.
• Testing can enhance retention by triggering elaborative retrieval processes. Attempting to retrieve target information involves a search of long-term memory that activates related information. Further, this activated information may then be encoded along with the retrieved target, forming an elaborated trace that affords multiple pathways to facilitate subsequent access to that information.
• Practice testing may enhance how well students mentally organise information and how well they process idiosyncratic aspects of individual items. Together, these can support better retention and test performance.

How general are the effects?

• Practice tests can benefit learning even when their format does not match the format of the criterion test.
• Practice tests that require more generative responses (such as recall or short answer) are more effective than practice tests that require less generative responses (such as filling in the blank or recognition).
• Concerning dosage, more is better.
• Concerning time intervals, longer is better.
• Repeated practice testing produces greater benefits when lags between trials within a session are longer rather than shorter, when trials are completed in different practice sessions rather than all in the same session, and when intervals between practice sessions are longer rather than shorter.
• The testing effects have been demonstrated across participants with a wide variety of ages.
• Some form of testing effect has been demonstrated with preschool and kindergarten children, elementary school students, middle school students, high school students, more advanced students, middle-aged learners, and older adults.

Issues for implementation

• Practice testing appears to be relatively reasonable with respect to time demands.
• Practice testing can be implemented with minimal training.
• The advantage of practice testing with feedback over restudy is it is extremely robust.
• The implementation of feedback with practice testing protects against perseveration errors when students respond incorrectly.
• Several studies have reported positive outcomes from administering summative assessments that are shorter and more frequent rather than longer and less frequent. This is true for both learning outcomes and student ratings of factors (such as course satisfaction and preference for more frequent testing).
• Practice testing is rated as having high utility.

Interleaved practice

What it is and why it should work?

• In interleaved practice, students alternate their practice of different types of items or problems. In contrast, blocking practice requires that all content from one subtopic is studied (or all problems of one type are practiced) before the student progresses to the next set of material.
• During practice, performance was better with blocked practice compared to interleaved practice. However, this advantage dramatically reversed on the criterion test.
• One explanation for the impressive effect of interleaved practice is that interleaving gives students practice at identifying which solution method should be used for a given item or problem.
• Interleaved practice helps students to discriminate between the different kinds of problems, meaning they will be more likely to use the correct solution method for each one.

How general are the effects?

• Interleaved practice may further enhance a student’s ability to develop accurate concepts when exemplars of different concepts are presented simultaneously.
• Interleaved practice may only be most beneficial after a certain level of competency has been achieved using blocked practice with an individual concept or problem type.
• The majority of studies on interleaved practice have included college-aged students. Sometimes performance was improved and sometimes there was no effect.
• It seems plausible that motivated students could easily use interleaving without help.

Issues for implementation

• After a given type of problem (or topic) has been introduced, practice should first focus on that particular problem. After the next type of problem is introduced (such as during another lecture or study session), that problem should first be practiced. However, this should be followed by extra practice involving interleaving the current type of problem with others introduced during previous sessions.
• Interleaved practice may take more time to implement compared to blocked practice, because solution times often lengthen during interleaved practice. However, slowing down probably indicates the recruitment of other processes that boost performance.
• Interleaved practice is rated as having moderate utility.
• Interleaved practice has been shown to have a relatively dramatic effect on student learning and the retention of mathematical skills.
• Interleaving helps with other cognitive skills.

Implications

• Beyond training students to use these techniques, teachers could also incorporate some of them into their lesson plans.
  • When beginning a new section of a unit, a teacher could begin with a practice test (with feedback) on the most important ideas from the previous section.
  • When students are practicing problems from a unit on mathematics, recently studied problems could be interleaved with related problems from previous units.
  • Teachers could also harness distributed practice by re-presenting the most important concepts and activities over the course of several classes.
  • When introducing key concepts or facts in class, teachers could engage students in explanatory questioning by prompting them to consider how the information is new to them, how it relates to what they already know, or why it might be true.
  • Even homework assignments could be designed to take advantage of many of these techniques.
• Teachers should be encouraged to train students to use learning techniques more consistently (and explicitly) when they are engaged in pursuing various instructional and learning goals.

Self-regulation is a process whereby people organise and manage their capacities in the service of attaining some desired future state. These capacities comprise their thoughts (such as competency beliefs), emotions (such as interest), behaviour (such as engagement with learning activities), and social-contextual surroundings (such as selecting a quiet, comfortable place to study).

Authors: Johnmarshall Reeve, Richard Ryan, Edward L. Deci, & Hyungshim Jang

Source: Reeve, J., Ryan, R., Deci, E.L., & Jang, H. (2008). Understanding and promoting autonomous self-regulation: A self-determination theory perspective. Chapter 9 in the book Motivation and self-regulated learning. Theory, research, and applications edited by Dale E. Schunk & Barry J. Zimmerman (Routledge, Taylor, & Francis Group).

Self-regulation is a process in which people organise and manage their capacities in the service of attaining some desired future state. These capacities are their thoughts (such as competency beliefs), emotions (such as interest), behaviour (such as engagement with learning activities), and social-contextual surroundings (such as selecting a quiet, comfortable place to study). Theories of self-regulation vary considerably in their specific foci: some focus on the ‘why’ of self-regulation, some on the ‘what’, and some on the ‘how’. When autonomous in their self-regulation, students are self-initiating and persistent because the tasks they undertake are perceived as interesting or personally important to them.

• Self-determination theory (SDT) begins with the assumption that people are active by nature with an evolved tendency to engage with the environment, assimilate new knowledge and skills, and integrate them into a coherent psychological structure.
• There are minitheories within SDT, including cognitive evaluation theory, organismic integration theory, and basic psychological needs theory.
• Cognitive evaluation theory explains how aspects of the social environment affect intrinsic motivation.
• To be intrinsically motivated is to engage in an activity because one finds the activity itself interesting and enjoyable.
• A general tendency for rewards undermines intrinsic motivation, although positive feedback tends to enhance intrinsic motivation. Moreover, tangible rewards can potentially enhance intrinsic motivation when they are used to communicate competence or improvement.
• External factors tend to undermine intrinsic motivation when they convey incompetence or pressure and control people’s behaviour.
• Organismic integration theory investigates the phenomena of internalisation and integration.
• Internalisation refers to the process through which an individual transforms an externally prescribed regulation or value into one that is internally endorsed.
• Integration refers to the experience in which an internalised regulation has been fully and coherently assimilated with one’s sense of self.
• Basic psychological needs theory focuses on the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness as the basis of students’ autonomous self-regulation.

Student-classroom dialectical framework

• According to the SDT framework, all students possess inner motivational resources that can potentially allow them to engage constructively and proactively in learning activities. This is regardless of their starting point, background, or ability.
• Students’ inner resources are psychological needs (such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness, integrated values, interests, and intrinsic goals).
• The classroom learning environment includes the teacher’s motivating style (such as autonomy supportive vs. controlling) and external events. These events can include interesting things to do, opportunities for action, rules and limits, reward and incentives, goals, feedback, rationales, optimal challenges, and evaluations and assessments.
• The student proactively engages in learning opportunities as an expression of the self and out of a desire to interact in the classroom effectively.
• The classroom environment sometimes nurtures and enriches the student’s inner resources, maintaining intrinsic motivation and facilitating internalisation. However, sometimes it can disrupt and thwart these natural processes.

Controlling instructional behaviours

• Uttering directives/commands: voicing commands, such as do this, move that, place it here, turn the page.
• Uttering should, got to, ought to: voicing statements that students should, must, have, got to, or ought to think, feel, or do something that they are not currently thinking, feeling, or doing
• Telling ‘the right way’: verbalising (or announcing) a particular way of behaving before students have the opportunity to discover an effective way of behaving for themselves
• Showing ‘the right way’: explicitly displaying (or exhibiting) a particular way of behaving before students have the opportunity to discover an effective way of behaving for themselves
• Monopolising learning materials: the teacher physically holds, possesses, and monopolises the learning materials
• Controlling questions: communicating directives posed as a question and voiced with the intonation of a question

Classroom research on self-determination theory

• Autonomy-supportive classroom contexts tend to promote autonomous self-regulation by helping students to achieve the following: set their own goals; direct their own behaviour; seek out optimal challenges; pursue their own interests and values; choose their own way of solving a problem; think more flexibly and more actively; persist rather than give up; perform better and more creatively; employ more mature coping strategies; and experience more positive feelings about themselves and their learning.
• When learning tasks were introduced in autonomy-supportive (as opposed to controlling) ways, students achieved more positive learning outcomes.
• Supporting intrinsic motivation means being attuned to students’ autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation, and finding ways to enrich learning opportunities to render them more interesting and relevant to students’ lives.

Supporting internalisation, identified regulation, and integrated regulation

• Teachers can provide rationales that explain why their recommended way of thinking or behaving might be personally useful for the students.
• Teachers can use informational rather than pressuring language.
• Teachers can acknowledge students’ negative feelings about undertaking uninteresting or nonvalued endeavours.
• Teachers can display high relatedness to students; hence, they know with confidence that their teacher truly cares about and is looking out for their personal welfare.
• Teachers can suggest ‘interest-enhancing strategies’ to support student engagement during relatively uninteresting lessons. For example, goals can be added, repetitive tasks can be conducted in different ways, and students can work in the company of friends.