Outpatient Treatment of Dyslexia Through Stimulation of the Cerebral Hemispheres

Abstract

Although a number of experimental investigations into the effects of hemisphere stimulation on the reading performance of individuals with dyslexia are currently available, only a few studies have addressed the effects of treatment in the setting of an outpatient clinic. The present study reports on the reading results after a treatment that was based on the balance model and incorporated notions from cognitive psychological origin in 80 children with severe dyslexia who were referred to the outpatient clinic of the Paedological Institute in Amsterdam. Treatment was individually tailored, depending on the type of dyslexia, the phase of the learning-to-read process, and the intermediate results of treatment. Effects on reading performance, measured after preclinical (home-training), clinical, and postclinical intervention periods, were analyzed through multiple time-series and multilevel analyses. Treatment with flash cards, exercising automatic letter-sound conversions, appeared to have a robust and slight effect in the preclinical and clinical phases, respectively, whereas hemishpere stimulation produced robust effects in both the clinical and the post-clinical period. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models, experimental findings of other investigations, intellectual and scholastic characteristics of the subjects, and such treatment factors as compliance (see Note).