Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objectives: Dyslexia is one of the common types of learning disabilities. Dyslexia is seen among students who have average IQ. Dyslexia is a neurological disorder with tremendous impact on the brain's ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information. One of the consequences of dyslexia is the impact on reading performance. Reading is one of the most effective and determining skills of the students. This skill has considerable sensitivity in classrooms and schools and is the foundation of student growth in other areas. Executive functions include students at risk, especially children with learning disabilities. Executive functions are used for reading. In the past, to develop the level of reading education, various tools and models, especially computers, have been widely used. The capability of a computer–aided individual teaching system shows fruitful results. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of cognitive computer games training in increasing the reading performance of dyslexic students.
Methods: This research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. In this study, the statistical population included all dyslexic students who were referred to the special learning problems centers located in the district one education department of Rasht City, Iran in the academic year 2019–2020. They had problems in Persian lessons and through the Dyslexia Symptoms Questionnaire (Salimi Timori, 2007) were identified. According to available information, the number of students who visited the centers during November of this academic year was 293. In this study, the experimental sample included a group of students who were referred to the special learning problems centers. In this regard, first, those students whose grades of dyslexia were higher than the cutoff line were identified. Then, 40 eligible volunteers were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups (each group with 20 people). The study data were gathered via Dyslexia Symptoms Questionnaire (Salimi Timori, 2007) in pretst and posttest for two groups. In this study, the Cognitive Computer Training Program was used for educational intervention. This program aimed at teaching working memory under the supervision of psychological specialists of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and with the cooperation of Sina Behavioral–Cognitive Sciences Research Institute in 2010. It was based on existing theories, following the example of Robo Mamo software that included focusing on visual–spatial and verbal memory of Klingberg (2005) and was adapted to Iranian culture. Cognitive computer training was taught in eight 60–min sessions only for experimental group. To analyze the data, the descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (the parametric test of covariance analysis) were performed in SPSS version 24. The significance level of 0.05 was considered for the tests.
Results: The results showed that the training with cognitive computer games was effective in reducing the reading disorder variable of dyslexic students of the experimental group compared to the students of the control group (p<0.001). The effect size of cognitive computer games training on reducing the reading disorder of dyslexic students was 0.829.
Conclusion: Based on the study findings, cognitive computer games training is effective in increasing the reading performance of dyslexic students. Therefore, cognitive computer game training can be effective for students with reading disabilities.