Phonological remediation effects on a child with giftedness and developmental dyslexia.
Alba Miranda Beserra Gurgel Sena, Bárbara Louise Costa Messias, Roberta Louise Mariano Bezerra and 3 others
PMID 39109707WHAT IT FOUND
A child with giftedness and dyslexia improved reading speed and phonological awareness after 20 weeks of remediation.
Writing and lexical access remained impaired. This single case cannot prove the intervention works for all children with this profile.
Key findings
01The participant's oral reading speed increased from 20 words per minute to 94.4 words per minute, moving from the alphabetic to the orthographic reading level.
02Phonological awareness scores improved, with the total score rising from 49 to 57, and the child moved from a syllabic-alphabetic to an alphabetic writing hypothesis.
03Writing accuracy did not significantly improve, with persistent letter replacements and segmentation errors, and rapid automatized naming remained below expected levels for digits, objects, and colors.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is a single case report, so the results cannot be generalized to other children. The child was bilingual and had high abilities/giftedness, factors that may have influenced the rapid improvement in reading and phonological skills independently of the intervention. There was no control group, so natural development or other unmeasured factors could account for the changes. Parental engagement was noted to be lower during the intervention period due to work demands, which may have affected consistency. The interval between assessments was extended due to school holidays and missed appointments, potentially affecting the measurement of progress.
Declared interests
The research was supported by CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - Brazil). No other conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that phonological remediation will produce similar rapid improvements in reading speed for all children with dyslexia. This result comes from a single child who was also gifted and bilingual, and writing skills did not improve despite the reading gains.