Replicability of sight word training and phonics training in poor readers: a randomised controlled trial

G McArthur; S Kohnen; K Jones; P Eve; E Banales; L Larsen; A Castles

doi:10.7717/peerj.922

Replicability of sight word training and phonics training in poor readers: a randomised controlled trial

PeerJ. 2015 May 5:3:e922. doi: 10.7717/peerj.922. eCollection 2015.

Authors

G McArthur¹, S Kohnen¹, K Jones¹, P Eve¹, E Banales¹, L Larsen¹, A Castles¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders , Macquarie University, NSW , Australia.

Abstract

Given the importance of effective treatments for children with reading impairment, paired with growing concern about the lack of scientific replication in psychological science, the aim of this study was to replicate a quasi-randomised trial of sight word and phonics training using a randomised controlled trial (RCT) design. One group of poor readers (N = 41) did 8 weeks of phonics training (i.e., phonological decoding) and then 8 weeks of sight word training (i.e., whole-word recognition). A second group did the reverse order of training. Sight word and phonics training each had a large and significant valid treatment effect on trained irregular words and word reading fluency. In addition, combined sight word and phonics training had a moderate and significant valid treatment effect on nonword reading accuracy and fluency. These findings demonstrate the reliability of both phonics and sight word training in treating poor readers in an era where the importance of scientific reliability is under close scrutiny.

Keywords: Dyslexia; Phonics; Poor readers; Randomised controlled trial; Reading; Sight words.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by NHMRC Project 488518 and ARC DP0879556. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.