Instructional Supports for Children with Dyslexia Learning to Read Complex Words

The purpose of the research plan is to better understand the effect of malleable instructional approaches for teaching complex words on reading outcomes for students with dyslexia. To address this goal, the PI will conduct an experimental study to explore and compare the effects of three different approaches to teaching complex word reading (SFV training, morphological training, and SFV plus morphological training) on students' proximal and distal word reading outcomes. Approximately 300 students in grades 3-5 with dyslexia will be recruited across the first 3 years of the project to participate in a short-duration design experiment. Students will be randomly assigned to receive one of the three types of instruction provided over the course of 3 days. SFV training will encourage students to engage with mispronunciations/decoded forms of complex words in a variety of ways. Morphological training will directly target the spelling and meaning of words and will be based on morphological interventions that have demonstrated positive effects in the literature. The combined training will involve equal parts of the SFV and morphological trainings. Students will complete a battery of reading and cognitive measures prior to and after the instructional period. The PI will conduct within-treatment analyses to determine the strength of the response to instruction from pre-test to post-test on the trained words and between-treatment analyses to compare the effects of the three approaches on the untaught transfer words. In addition, differential effects based on student skills (such as general word reading skill, morphological awareness, and phonological awareness) and word characteristics (such as frequency, length, and number of morphemes) will also be examined.