فهرست مطالب نازنین عباسی فشمی

Dyslexia as a common developmental disorder in childhood can seriously impair the educational process of students and according to the previous studies, biofeedback can help these children manage those issues. This study sought to investigate the effectiveness of biofeedback on improving reading performance and visual-motor perception in children with dyslexia.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and a control group design. The statistical population included all 8-12 year old male students with dyslexia referred to learning disorders centers in the 3rd district of Tehran in 2019; from which 24 people were selected by the available sampling method according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n=12) and the control group (n=12). Instruments used in this study included the Reading and Dyslexia Test (Nema) (Kormi Nouri and Moradi, 2005) and the Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (Bender, 1938). The intervention group underwent 30 sessions of 45-minutes biofeedback intervention program, while the control group received only the usual training of learning disorders centers. Data were analyzed using analysis of covariance in the SPSS-22 software.

The results of data analysis showed that biofeedback improved the reading performance of children with dyslexia. This method reduced the shape error, composition eror, rotation error, continuity error, and thus improved the visual-motor perception of children with dyslexia (p <0.01). 

Biofeedback method can use the principles of factor conditioning learning to change and improve brain waves, strengthen self-regulation skills, improve brain function and thus improve reading performance and visual-motor perception in children with dyslexia.

Dyslexia as one of the most prevalent learning disabilities may cause many cases of academic failure in primary school students. During the recent years, several research and clinical methods have been used to treat children with this disability. Present study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation and neurofeedback on improvement of executive functions in children with dyslexia.

This research was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest control group design with 2-month follow-up period. The study population included all the 8 to 12-year old children with dyslexia who had referred to centers for learning disability in District 3 of Tehran in 2019, among which a sample of 36 students were selected by purposive sampling and then randomly assigned to one of the two experimental groups or the control group. One of the experimental groups received eleven 60-min sessions of rehabilitation with working memory training software and the second experimental group received thirty 45- min sessions of neurofeedback intervention, whereas the control group received no intervention. All the three groups were assessed at the stages of pretest, posttest, and two-month follow-up period. To collect the data, Reading and Dyslexia Test (Karami Nouri & Moradi, 2008) and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (Gerard et al., 2000) were used. Repeated measures analysis of variance were used to analyze the data.

Results of data analysis indicated that cognitive rehabilitation and neurofeedback were significantly effective in improving the components of executive functions at both pretest and posttest stages (P<.05). Also, comparison of means showed that there was no significant difference between the cognitive rehabilitation and neurofeedback in terms of their effects on the components of executive functions (P>.05). However, scores of the experimental groups were significantly different from those of the control group (P<0.05).

Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that cognitive rehabilitation by promoting the mental and intellectual abilities, and neurofeedback by providing positive and negative feedbacks and reinforce self-regulation can be effective in improving executive functions in children with dyslexia.