Comparing the Efficiency of Neuropsychological and Davis Method Interventions on Language Skills (Phonological, Semantic, Syntactic Skills) of Dyslexic Students

As one of the most common learning disabilities, dyslexia is associated with a delayed reading ability and characterized by a considerable failure in the development of vocabulary recognition skills and reading comprehension.The purpose of the study was to compare the efficiency of neuropsychological and Davis method interventions on reading performance of dyslexic students of first and second grade elementary in Esfahan city.The research was experimental with pre-test, post-test, follow up and control group design. Methods and Materials: The study population included all the dyslexic students of first and second grade elementary in the school year 2015-2016 in Esfahan city. The sample included 45 dyslexic students who were selected by cluster random sampling and were divided into three groups so that 15 of them were treated with neuropsychological methods, 15 of them with Davis method and there was no intervention on the rest of them. The research tools included reading disorder diagnosis test based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), teacher-made reading performance test, Raven's intelligence test for children and Test Of Language Development (TOLD). After the interventions, the reading test and reading performance test were conducted and the data were analyzed by SPSS software and multivariate covariance analysis. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the post-test average scores of experimental groups and the control group in the reading test (p≤0.001). The results of paired comparison also showed that the post-test average scores of neuropsychological group are greater than Davis group’s scores in the Language Coordinate (p≤0.001). That as language has many neuropsychological bases, it can play an important role in one's reception and expressionSome neuropsychological skills such as attention, memory and executive functions, etc are the preconditions of the receptive language and, hence, neuropsychological skills are the essential steps in the acquisition of language.