Graphogame intervention as a tool for early diagnosis of reading difficulties in Spanish-speaking children with developmental language disorder

GraphoGame is a computer-based game that trains grapheme-to-phoneme associations and has been shown to benefit reading acquisition in different languages and countries. In transparent languages, such as Spanish, learning grapheme-to-phoneme associations is of great importance when learning to read, and GraphoGame can help children at risk of developing reading difficulties overcome their struggles. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at high risk of developing reading difficulties, and they are therefore an interesting target group for a study on the effects of using GraphoGame as an intervention tool, as well as a tool for early diagnosis of later reading difficulties. Using generalised linear mixed models, this article explores the progress made in GraphoGame and reading-related skills by children with DLD – with and without comprehension difficulties – and their typically developing (TD) classmates in kindergarten or first grade. Fifty-nine children were included in the current study (16 TD and 43 DLD; mean age = 6.4 years, SD = 0.7 years). By testing children before and after six weeks of GraphoGame intervention, changes in their performance at letter recognition, pseudoword recognition and phonological awareness are studied. In addition to the differences due to oral language skills (expressive and receptive), how the children perform in GraphoGame and whether the progress in the aforementioned reading-related skills is predictive of reading status in second grade (good or poor readers) are examined. After six weeks of GraphoGame intervention, all children improved at all of the assessed reading-related skills, regardless of the test (letter recognition, phonological awareness and pseudoword recognition). Additionally, the children with DLD with comprehension difficulties made less progress in GraphoGame than the other two groups. The same was found for the children who were classified as poor readers in second grade: none of the poor readers reached the highest levels of the game. Finally, performance at the first level of GraphoGame mildly correlated with reading fluency, as assessed one year after the intervention. Future studies should consider larger populations, as well as the long-term effect of interventions such as the one studied here.