Perceptual Units Training for Improving Word Analysis Skills.

Abstract : This report provides a detailed account of a training system designed to develop automaticity of one subcomponents of reading, namely, locating and disembedding multiletter units within words. The training task, implemented in a microcomputer-based game, called SPEED, is one in which students are required to detect whether or not a target multiletter unit is presented within words which are presented in rapid succession on the video screen. The goal of the game is for the student to get faster at monitoring for units without making too many errors. Four students from a local high school were trained. They represented two groups of poor readers as measured on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test. Performance records of students' progress on the task itself indicate that training was successful. Substantial improvements were evident in both learning rates and performance levels. Maintenance tests for assessing the stability of gains in speed on units after training on them had been terminated were run on a regular basis and the trainees were consistently successful on them. In addition, a battery of three criterion tasks (perceptual unit detection, pseudo word pronunciation, and span of apprehension) enabled us to assess the degree of transfer of training to a set of control units and to other reading components. Training had the effect of increasing students' efficiency in detecting effect generalized to units which had not been explicity trained. (Author)