Browsing by Author "Huttunen, Iina"

Objectives: The aim of this study was to test if the new phonemic awareness intervention affected the reading skills of Finnish-speaking children in grades 3 to 5 who had had challenges in learning to read or write. The control group attended to a rapid naming intervention. The effects of the interventions were measured with phonological processing, reading and writing tests. In addition, we were interested in what kind of children benefit from the phonemic awareness intervention the most. Because the study and interventions were conducted remotely, we also got some evidence of how children’s reading difficulties can be assessed and rehabilitated remotely. Methods: This study involved 34 Finnish-speaking children who had not learned to read or write as expected. The children were from grades 3rd to 5th and located across Finland. Twenty of them took part in a new phonemic awareness intervention and fourteen in a naming intervention. The groups had congruent background information and reading skills. The phonemic awareness intervention was adapted to the skills of each child. The whole study, including interventions, was done remotely using Zoom. Both interventions lasted four weeks, consisting of twelve 10 to 15 minutes long exercise sessions. Children’s reading and writing skills and some other skills relevant to literacy like phonological awareness, working memory and rapid naming were assessed before and after the intervention. Results and Conclusions: Intervention groups did not significantly differ from each other in the development of phonological processing, reading and writing. Both groups progressed in phonological processing and reading during the intervention. The benefits of the exercises were also separately assessed among children who performed below average in the measured tasks. Even then there were no statistically significant differences between the groups. Neither age nor prior reading skills predicted the magnitude of benefit from phonological awareness intervention. However, this study indicates that literacy skills can be assessed and practiced remotely.