Development and effectiveness of a screening measure and a computerized cognitive remediation program for children with reading and arithmetic difficulties

Abstract

Reading and arithmetic skills are considered as the foundation skills necessary for educational and vocational success. Research has outlined the important role of specific cognitive functions for efficient reading, comprehension of text and arithmetic processes. Learning difficulties have been shown to have a tremendous impact on later life, both in academics and social relationships. It therefore becomes newlineimperative that we identify, as early as possible, children at risk for learning newlinedifficulties and attempt to assess the relevant cognitive skills and plan and execute intervention programs to improve the efficacy of these cognitive skills. This present study has attempted to do this, keeping the Right to Intervention (RTI) model as the rationale and has focussed on designing an assessment tool along with a remediation program based on the cognitive viewpoint.The two objectives of this research were: development of a screening measure newlinefor identification of children with reading and arithmetic difficulties and development newlineof a computer based cognitive intervention program for improving reading and newlinearithmetic skills. The research was conducted in two stages. Stage one involved the newlinecompiling of the screening measure which consisted of three domains: cognitive newlineabilities, reading comprehension and arithmetic ability. The assessment measure was administered on 1091, third, fourth and fifth grade children from English medium newlineschools in South Bangalore, following the ICSE syllabus. The data obtained was newlinesubjected to item analyses and the final screening tool - Arithmetic and Reading Test newline(ART) - was developed, which comprised of tests for reading comprehension, arithmetic ability and cognitive functions, i.e., attention and concentration, visual newlineperception, visuo-spatial ability, processing and working memory. Psychometric properties were established and the ART was found to be reliable and valid. Test-retest reliability of the ART was 0.76.