The Effectiveness of Auditory Training Program on Improving Phonological Skills, ‎Auditory Discrimination and Articulation in Students with Dyslexia

Reading is one of the most important basic skills that students achieve at elementary school. There is always a high percentage of students who suffer from reading disabilities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an auditory training program on improving phonological skills, auditory discrimination, and articulation in students with dyslexia.

 In this study, twenty four students from the fourth and fifth grades of elementary school (including 6 girls and 18 boys) were selected and divided into two groups of experimental and control lists. The students of both control and experimental groups were chosen from those referred to Gohare mehr and Talash learning disorder institutes in Tehran. To evaluate auditory discrimination, phonological analysis and articulation in pre-test and post-test, the Persian Version of Language Development Test (TOLD: P3) was used. The intervention program which included 8-hours of auditory training was conducted and performed in the summer of 1397 in above-mentioned centers for students in the experimental group, however, the control group have received any special program. Analysis was performed using the analysis method of variance with duplicate measurement and Bonfroni follow-up test at the error level of 5% on phonological skills, auditory discrimination and articulation.

The results of multivariate covariance analysis showed a significant increase in subjects' ability in phonological analysis skills, auditory discrimination and articulation (p<0.001). However, there were no significant differences between the scores of pre-test and post-test of the control group students (p <0.05). Also, after the intervention, the mean scores of the experimental group students were significantly higher than the control group (p<0.001), while before the intervention there was no significant difference between these two groups (p <0.05).

It can be concluded from the research findings that cognitive rehabilitation method is effective on stuttering severity and increases executive functions in children with childhood onset fluency disorder and can be used as a treatment method.