This effectiveness study reports results of a long-term research/school-system partnership that i... more This effectiveness study reports results of a long-term research/school-system partnership that is implementing reading intervention for struggling readers in community schools. In Study 1, we compare reading outcomes before and after children participated in community-led intervention (EmpowerTM Reading: Decoding and Spelling; n=341) to results from previously reported researcher-led intervention and business-as-usual controls (Lovett et al., 2017). Children in both community-led and researcher-led interventions showed greater improvement than controls on standardized measures of decoding and reading comprehension. Overall, among community participants, greater gains were seen for those with stronger reading skills at pretest. In Study 2, growth curve analyses revealed significant long-term shifts in the reading trajectories of children (n=731) from Kindergarten to Grade 5 as a function of receiving the EmpowerTM intervention. Long-term outcomes were higher in children who received...
Results from a controlled evaluation of remedial reading interventions are reported: 279 young di... more Results from a controlled evaluation of remedial reading interventions are reported: 279 young disabled readers were randomly assigned to a program according to a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design (IQ, socioeconomic status [SES], and race). The effectiveness of two multiple-component intervention programs for children with reading disabilities (PHAB + RAVE-O; PHAB + WIST) was evaluated against alternate (CSS, MATH) and phonological control programs. Interventions were taught an hour daily for 70 days on a 1:4 ratio at three different sites. Multiple-component programs showed significant improvements relative to control programs on all basic reading skills after 70 hours and at 1-year follow-up. Equivalent gains were observed for different racial, SES, and IQ groups. These factors did not systematically interact with program. Differential outcomes for word identification, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary were found between the multidimensional programs, although equivalent long-term o...
Twenty-two reading-disabled children were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions to... more Twenty-two reading-disabled children were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer speech-based system for training literacy skills. The sample included 17 children with significant neurological impairment of various etiologies (including spina bifida and hydrocephalus, seizure disorder, brain tumors, cerebral palsy, and head injury) and five developmental dyslexics. The training employed a "talking" computer system that provides synthesized speech feedback during the course of learning. The training conditions included three word recognition and spelling-training programs and a math-training control program. Three different literacy-training procedures were compared, with the size of the trained print-to-sound unit varying as letter-sound (LSD: train-->t/r/ai/n); onset-rhyme (OR: train-->tr/ain) and whole word units (WW: train-->train). All literacy-training groups made significant gains in word recognition and spelling, with the LSD- and OR-trained subjects making the greatest word recognition gains on the words that could be trained with segmented speech feedback (i.e., words with regular spelling-to-sound patterns). All literacy-training groups demonstrated significant transfer on uninstructed rhymes of instructed regular words, with the greatest degree of transfer achieved by the LSD-trained subjects. These findings suggest that the neurologically impaired children were able to profit from instructional procedures that segment the printed word into units corresponding to onsets, rhymes, and phonemes and that this segmentation training may facilitate transfer-of-training for them.
This article tells the story of how a set of reading interventions, developed for use in a series... more This article tells the story of how a set of reading interventions, developed for use in a series of large-scale research studies, led our Toronto team of psychologists and special education teachers to a new understanding about reading disabilities and how they may be remediated. Over several studies, the instructional approaches we developed were refined and tested for their efficacy and evolved to a point where they could be tested in community schools and taught by special education teachers rather than by our own research teachers. School boards began requesting access to the reading programs outside of the context of research, and our team became involved in knowledge translation, a term that describes broader-scale sharing of results and research products for implementation in the real world—the translation of research into practice.
Across multiple schools in three sites, the impact of grade-at-intervention was evaluated for chi... more Across multiple schools in three sites, the impact of grade-at-intervention was evaluated for children at risk or meeting criteria for reading disabilities. A multiple-component reading intervention with demonstrated efficacy was offered to small groups of children in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. In a quasi-experimental design, 172 children received the Triple-Focus Program (PHAST + RAVE-O), and 47 were control participants. Change during intervention and 1-3 years later (6-8 testing points), and the influence of individual differences in predicting outcomes, were assessed using reading and reading-related repeated measures. Intervention children out-performed control children at posttest on all 14 outcomes, with average effect sizes (Cohen’s d) on standardized measures of .80 and on experimental measures of 1.69. On foundational word reading skills (standardized measures), children who received intervention earlier, in 1st and 2nd grade, made gains relative to controls almost twice that of children receiving intervention in 3rd grade. At follow-up, the advantage of 1st grade intervention was even clearer: First graders continued to grow at faster rates over the follow-up years than 2nd graders on six of eight key reading outcomes. For some outcomes with metalinguistic demands beyond the phonological, however, a posttest advantage was revealed for 2nd grade Triple participants and for 3rd grade Triple participants relative to controls. Estimated IQ predicted growth during intervention on seven of eight outcomes. Growth during follow-up was predicted by vocabulary and visual sequential memory. These findings provide evidence on the importance of early intensive evidence-based intervention for reading problems in the primary grades.
Abstract. One hundred and twenty-two severely reading disabled children were randomly assigned to... more Abstract. One hundred and twenty-two severely reading disabled children were randomly assigned to one of two word identification training programs or a study skills control program. One program remediated deficient phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct ...
This effectiveness study reports results of a long-term research/school-system partnership that i... more This effectiveness study reports results of a long-term research/school-system partnership that is implementing reading intervention for struggling readers in community schools. In Study 1, we compare reading outcomes before and after children participated in community-led intervention (EmpowerTM Reading: Decoding and Spelling; n=341) to results from previously reported researcher-led intervention and business-as-usual controls (Lovett et al., 2017). Children in both community-led and researcher-led interventions showed greater improvement than controls on standardized measures of decoding and reading comprehension. Overall, among community participants, greater gains were seen for those with stronger reading skills at pretest. In Study 2, growth curve analyses revealed significant long-term shifts in the reading trajectories of children (n=731) from Kindergarten to Grade 5 as a function of receiving the EmpowerTM intervention. Long-term outcomes were higher in children who received...
Results from a controlled evaluation of remedial reading interventions are reported: 279 young di... more Results from a controlled evaluation of remedial reading interventions are reported: 279 young disabled readers were randomly assigned to a program according to a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design (IQ, socioeconomic status [SES], and race). The effectiveness of two multiple-component intervention programs for children with reading disabilities (PHAB + RAVE-O; PHAB + WIST) was evaluated against alternate (CSS, MATH) and phonological control programs. Interventions were taught an hour daily for 70 days on a 1:4 ratio at three different sites. Multiple-component programs showed significant improvements relative to control programs on all basic reading skills after 70 hours and at 1-year follow-up. Equivalent gains were observed for different racial, SES, and IQ groups. These factors did not systematically interact with program. Differential outcomes for word identification, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary were found between the multidimensional programs, although equivalent long-term o...
Twenty-two reading-disabled children were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions to... more Twenty-two reading-disabled children were randomly assigned to one of four training conditions to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer speech-based system for training literacy skills. The sample included 17 children with significant neurological impairment of various etiologies (including spina bifida and hydrocephalus, seizure disorder, brain tumors, cerebral palsy, and head injury) and five developmental dyslexics. The training employed a "talking" computer system that provides synthesized speech feedback during the course of learning. The training conditions included three word recognition and spelling-training programs and a math-training control program. Three different literacy-training procedures were compared, with the size of the trained print-to-sound unit varying as letter-sound (LSD: train-->t/r/ai/n); onset-rhyme (OR: train-->tr/ain) and whole word units (WW: train-->train). All literacy-training groups made significant gains in word recognition and spelling, with the LSD- and OR-trained subjects making the greatest word recognition gains on the words that could be trained with segmented speech feedback (i.e., words with regular spelling-to-sound patterns). All literacy-training groups demonstrated significant transfer on uninstructed rhymes of instructed regular words, with the greatest degree of transfer achieved by the LSD-trained subjects. These findings suggest that the neurologically impaired children were able to profit from instructional procedures that segment the printed word into units corresponding to onsets, rhymes, and phonemes and that this segmentation training may facilitate transfer-of-training for them.
This article tells the story of how a set of reading interventions, developed for use in a series... more This article tells the story of how a set of reading interventions, developed for use in a series of large-scale research studies, led our Toronto team of psychologists and special education teachers to a new understanding about reading disabilities and how they may be remediated. Over several studies, the instructional approaches we developed were refined and tested for their efficacy and evolved to a point where they could be tested in community schools and taught by special education teachers rather than by our own research teachers. School boards began requesting access to the reading programs outside of the context of research, and our team became involved in knowledge translation, a term that describes broader-scale sharing of results and research products for implementation in the real world—the translation of research into practice.
Across multiple schools in three sites, the impact of grade-at-intervention was evaluated for chi... more Across multiple schools in three sites, the impact of grade-at-intervention was evaluated for children at risk or meeting criteria for reading disabilities. A multiple-component reading intervention with demonstrated efficacy was offered to small groups of children in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. In a quasi-experimental design, 172 children received the Triple-Focus Program (PHAST + RAVE-O), and 47 were control participants. Change during intervention and 1-3 years later (6-8 testing points), and the influence of individual differences in predicting outcomes, were assessed using reading and reading-related repeated measures. Intervention children out-performed control children at posttest on all 14 outcomes, with average effect sizes (Cohen’s d) on standardized measures of .80 and on experimental measures of 1.69. On foundational word reading skills (standardized measures), children who received intervention earlier, in 1st and 2nd grade, made gains relative to controls almost twice that of children receiving intervention in 3rd grade. At follow-up, the advantage of 1st grade intervention was even clearer: First graders continued to grow at faster rates over the follow-up years than 2nd graders on six of eight key reading outcomes. For some outcomes with metalinguistic demands beyond the phonological, however, a posttest advantage was revealed for 2nd grade Triple participants and for 3rd grade Triple participants relative to controls. Estimated IQ predicted growth during intervention on seven of eight outcomes. Growth during follow-up was predicted by vocabulary and visual sequential memory. These findings provide evidence on the importance of early intensive evidence-based intervention for reading problems in the primary grades.
Abstract. One hundred and twenty-two severely reading disabled children were randomly assigned to... more Abstract. One hundred and twenty-two severely reading disabled children were randomly assigned to one of two word identification training programs or a study skills control program. One program remediated deficient phonological analysis and blending skills and provided direct ...
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Papers by Karen A. Steinbach