Comparison of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation and Neurofeedback on Improving the Executive Functions 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.