The effectiveness of executive functions based on cognitive rehabilitation on improving cognitive deficits in children with dyslexia

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of executive functions based rehabilitation program on cognitive deficits of children with dyslexia. This study was experimental with pre-test and post-test with control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all students with dyslexia in the fourth and fifth grades of elementary school in Tehran in 1397-1398 academic year. The sample consisted of 40 dyslexic students who were selected by clustering sampling method and randomly assigned into two experimental (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. After conducting the revised effortful Control Scale as pretest on both groups, the executive functions based rehabilitation program was applied to the experimental group in 12 sessions and each session for 60 minutes twice a week, but the control group received no intervention. Then, both groups responded to mentioned questionnaire as post-test. Data were analyzed using repeated measure ANCOVA. The results showed that there was significant difference between the experimental and control group in cognitive deficits of distraction, poor concentration, poor attention shifting and impulsivity. These results indicate that executive functions based rehabilitation program have led to improve cognitive deficits in children with dyslexia, thus, this intervention can be a useful program for dyslexic children.