Early Intervention for Reading Disability Aids Development of Brain System Responsible for Skilled Reading and Improves Reading Fluency

Effective reading intervention given to reading disabled children at an early age can change the brain system that underlies skilled reading and improve reading fluency and comprehension, researchers at Yale report.

“Our results indicate that neural systems for reading are malleable and highly responsive to effective reading instruction,” said principal investigator Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. “These results have promising implications for those with reading difficulties.”

Shaywitz and co-authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the effects of a systematic and explicit phonics-based year-long reading intervention on brain organization and reading fluency in 77 children between six and nine years of age. Forty-nine of the children were reading disabled and the others were not. Children were placed in three experimental groups: experimental intervention, community intervention and community control subjects. Brain images were taken before, immediately following, and one year after intervention ended.

Reading disabled children taught with the experimental phonics-based intervention demonstrated increased activation in the brain area called the left occipito-temporal region. They also made significant gains in reading fluency and comprehension one year after the intervention had ended.

“This is the first brain imaging study of reading intervention that reports its results on reading fluency, essential for skilled reading,” Shaywitz said. “This study provides evidence of plasticity of neural systems for reading and demonstrates that a scientifically-based reading intervention brings about significant and durable changes in brain organization so that the brain activation patterns resemble those of good readers.”

“These findings have important implications for public policy for teaching children to read,” Shaywitz added. “Providing effective reading instruction not only improves reading, but also changes the brain so that neural systems for reading are comparable to those of good readers. Teaching matters and can change the brain.”

Other authors on the study included Bennett A. Shaywitz, Benita A. Blachman, Kenneth R. Pugh, Robert K. Fulbright, Pawel Skudlarski, W. Einar Mencl, R. Todd Constable, John M. Holahan, Karen E. Marchione, Jack M. Fletcher, G. Reid Lyon and John C. Gore.

Citation: Biological Psychiatry, April 19, 2004 Vol. 55 pp 926-933.