Project I builds upon prior instructional, family genetics, and brain imaging research during the first funding cycle to evaluate alternative language-based instructional interventions for students with written language disabilities in grades 4 to 9. In each of the first three years of the project 20 dyslexics (10 girls and 10 boys) and 20 dysgraphics (10 girls and 10 boys) and 20 dysgraphics (10 girls and 10 boys) who are probands in Project III (Family Genetics Study) and who also qualify for Project IV (Brain Imaging) will be randomly assigned to one of contrasting treatments for word learning, which will be administered during the summer following Project IV brain imaging in the spring. In Year 1 Alphabet Principle and Morphological Awareness Treatments will be compared. In Year 2 Alphabet Principles and Orthographic/Phonological Memory Treatments will be compared. In Year 3 Morphological Awareness and Orthographic/Phonological Memory Treatments will be compared. In each of the last two years learning: oral reading versus silent reading (year 4) or combined silent and oral reading versus silent reading only (year 5). Following summer treatment, students will be reimaged in Project IV. Project I analyses will include ANCOVA with pretreatment language measures as covariates, hierarchical modeling of individual growth curves for reading and spelling probes, and multiple regressions. Each year student learning outcomes for trained reading and spelling skills and untrained language layers of the word learning module (orthographic, phonological, and morphological) will be evaluated statistically. Specific hypotheses to be tested include morphological fluency, word recognition-spelling asymmetry, and cause-cure asymmetry. Because students may participate in the design experiments of the summer outreach program of the Clinical Core in the summer following their participation in the controlled, randomized experiment comparing alternative instructional treatments, Project I can also investigate their reading and writing development longitudinally.
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