Peer-Reviewed Research

An achievement of reading research has been the development of intervention programs for struggling readers. Most intervention studies employ a pre-post design, to examine efficacy, but this precludes the study of intervention-driven growth.

This study examines the effectiveness of intensive summer intervention programs, including the Seeing Stars® program.

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A recent study by the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) utilized the Seeing Stars® program to test the efficacy of reading intervention with young children who have reading disabilities and difficulties.

Brain regions grew significantly thicker in children whose reading scores improved after Seeing Stars instruction. In addition, children from lower-socioeconomic status (SES) families were more likely to benefit from instruction than children from higher-SES families, and children with more severe reading disabilities exhibited the most improvement in reading scores.

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The findings of this study, which support the principles of dual coding theory [Paivio 2007], suggest the potential of a strength-based reading intervention in changing brain responses and facilitating better reading comprehension in ASD children.

"This study is the first to do reading intervention with ASD children using brain imaging techniques, and the findings reflect the plasticity of the brain," said Rajesh Kana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences and the senior author on this paper.

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This study revealed widespread changes in functional connectivity of the brain's reading network as a result of intervention in children with ASD.

"This study is the first to do reading intervention with ASD children using brain imaging techniques, and the findings reflect the plasticity of the brain," said Rajesh Kana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences and the senior author on this paper. In this study, the UAB researchers used a different approach on the same groups of children from their task-based study—resting-state fMRI.

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This study examined changes in GMV following intensive reading intervention using the Seeing Stars® program in children with dyslexia. Results demonstrate for the first time that training-induced changes in GMV can be observed in a pediatric sample and that reading improvements induced by intervention are accompanied by GMV changes.

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After receiving instruction in Seeing Stars®, adult dyslexics showed improvements in reading tasks. The study showed that these gains were accompanied by increased activity in the neural processes that are typically engaged by normal readers.

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This article presents gestalt imagery theory and its role in reading instruction. Sequential stimulation of imagery results in significant improvement in reading comprehension.

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This study showed that students who received instruction in the Visualizing and Verbalizing® program significantly enhanced comprehension compared to an untreated control group.

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This longitudinal study in a public school system shows that significant and increasing gains favoring Lindamood-Bell reading interventions were found overall and in analyses of Title 1 schools.

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This study demonstrated that instruction in the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® (LiPS®) Program significantly improved the foundational skills of reading, even for students with substantial phonological awareness difficulties.

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