AN EXPERIMENT ON COGNITIVE REMEDIATION OF WORD-READING DIFFICULTY

Cognitive remediation of decoding deficit was attempted by following a theoretically based program. The theory identifies fd ur major cognit ive processes: Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS ) processing. The PASS Remedial Program (PREP) provides 10 structured tasks that are aimed of developing internalized strategies for mainly successive processes (6 tasks) and simultaneous processes (4 tasks); d eficits in either of the two may lead to poor decoding. Through ifs '' global process'' training and curriculum-related ''bridging'' training , PEP facilitates application of internalized strategies arrived at in ductively for learning word decoding and spelling; it does not provide direct teaching of rules or exercises. To rest the efficacy of PREP, we divided 51 children with decoding difficulties in Grade 4 into two groups: PREP (bath global and bridging) and no treatment. In the secon d part of the study, children from the no-treatment group received eit her the global or the bridging part of PREP. The relative efficacy of training was tested by pre- and posttests of performance on a standard word-decoding test (the WRMT-R), as well as on some cognitive tests ( e.g., the GAS). The largest improvement in word decoding occurred for the PREP combined global and bridging treatment. The mechanism through which PREP improves word reading is discussed, as is the use of PREP for children at risk of developing dyslexia.