Benefits of assistive reading software for students with attention disorders

Annals of Dyslexia, 2002 by Hecker, Linda, Burns, Liza, Elkind, Jerome, Elkind, Kenneth, Katz, Lynda

This study investigated how assistive reading software affected the reading performance of a group of 20 post-secondary students who had a primary diagnosis of attention disorder. These students used assistive reading software for most of a semester to read assignments for an English class and in testing sessions in which comparisons were made between normal, unassisted reading, and reading assisted by the soft

ware. This software provides a synchronized visual and auditory presentation of text, and incorporates study skills tools for highlighting and note taking. Attention measures, reading speed, comprehension scores, and attitude questionnaire responses were obtained during these sessions. The principal findings were that the assistive software allowed the students to attend better to their reading, to reduce their distractibility, to read with less stress and fatigue, and to read for longer periods of time. It helped them to read faster and, thereby, to complete reading assignments in less time. It did not have a significant effect on comprehension, but it helped some students whose comprehension was very poor. The study results indicate that assistive reading software should be considered as a significant intervention to assist students who have attention disorders and as an accommodation to help them compensate for their disabilities.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last several years, software that helps people with reading disabilities compensate for their poor reading skills has become widely available. This software scans printed documents, recognizes the characters on the page, speaks the text to the user through a loudspeaker or earphones using a speech synthesizer, and simultaneously displays the printed page on the computer monitor. As the computer speaks a word, it is highlighted on the computer monitor, thereby providing a synchronized auditory and visual presentation of the text. The phrase, sentence, or paragraph containing the spoken word is also highlighted, but in a different color, to call attention to the context in which the word is used. The characteristics of the speech synthesizer (male or female voice and pitch, for example), speed of speech, and magnification of the text on the monitor are controlled by the user. The user can also decide to have the reading pause after each phrase, sentence, or paragraph, which is often useful when difficult material is being read. In addition, the software integrates electronic dictionaries and study skills tools that facilitate active reading strategies such as previewing section headings; highlighting main ideas, supporting details, and other important segments of text in distinctive colors; taking notes by typing, dictating, or copying; automatically creating study and writing outlines; and building glossaries of important terms. This software also works with electronic documents from word processors, Web pages, and other sources. In this paper, we use the term "assistive reading software" to refer to software with these capabilities; other terms used in the field include "reading machines" and "literacy software." Assistive reading software is available from several companies.1

Students with reading disabilities who have good receptive oral language have found that assistive reading software can enhance their reading speed and comprehension. Elkind (1998) and Elkind, Black, and Murray (1996), working with postsecondary students, found that the changes in reading rate and comprehension test scores observed when students used assistive reading software were inversely related to the students' unassisted performance: that is, students who read slowest or with poorest comprehension benefited the most. Higgins and Raskind (1997) obtained a similar result. In an earlier study, Elkind, Cohen, and Murray (1993) found an enhancement of comprehension in a study of middle school students. Leong (1992) studied the effects of text-to-speech systems on reading comprehension of elementary school students in a task in which the students were given word knowledge training. His results were equivocal in that the text-to-speech system improved comprehension of only a few of the passages that his students read. Students with reading disabilities also have reported that reading was less tiring and less stressful when they used assistive reading software and that they could double or triple the time that they could sustain reading (Elkind, et al., 1996).

This paper reports on an exploratory study of the effect of assistive reading software on students who have a primary diagnosis of attention disorder2 rather than a reading disability. This study was carried out at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, a small (enrollment is 360 students), private college in a rural setting that offers a two-year Associates Degree in Liberal Studies. It is a fully accredited post-secondary institution exclusively serving students with learning disabilities and attention disorders.

Our interest in students with attention disorders grew out of two observations: (1) In their 1993 study, Elkind, Cohen and Murray observed that several of their middle school students who had difficulty maintaining attention to their reading were able to read for longer periods of time when they used assistive reading software. They reported that the combination of the computer display of the text and the auditory input seemed to allow these students to focus their attention better and to block out distractions. (2) More recently, after Landmark College installed assistive reading software to support a new curriculum that addresses the needs of students with very poor decoding skills (Hecker, 2000), students with attention disorders reported that they were able to read for longer periods of time when they used the software and that it improved their reading. Although there is a large literature on accommodations and interventions for students with attention disorders (see Katz, Goldstein, & Beers, 2001, and DuPaul & Eckert, 1998, for summaries), we were not able to find studies relevant to our interest in the use of assistive reading software by students with this disability. As a result, we decided to undertake a formal study at Landmark College to determine if the reported benefits could be substantiated and quantified.