A Systematic Review on the Effectiveness of Executive Functions Training on the Enhancement of the Reading and Writing Performances Among Children with Learning Problems

Specific learning disorders are neurodevelopmental disorders with biological origin. This origin includes the interaction of genetic, paragenetic, and environmental factors. At the same time, the symptoms of this disorder occur at the cognitive level. Specific learning disorders include problems in academic abilities such as fluency in reading, reading comprehension, writing, and mathematical reasoning. The most common learning disorder seems to be dyslexia. Learning disabilities are one of the main problems in children's academic performance and progress in the educational system of the United States and probably other countries around the world. One increasingly prominent and well–documented treatment for this developmental impairment has recently been the executive functions training approach. This study is intended to be a systematic review of the effectiveness of executive functions training on reading and writing skills of students with learning difficulties as a scientific ground for selecting more efficacious treatments.

To this end, this research was done as a systematic literature review, scoping various techniques and different treatment approaches that have been applied so far to enhance the academic performances of students with reading and writing difficulties. Three online databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Only research studies published in English were accounted for. No limitations were exerted but on the subject's country or language. The time duration for all search was from 2010 to 2022. All papers were to be first–order research; this study did not include other literature reviews and meta–analytic research in its study sample. It also excluded interventions for other learning problems, such as dyscalculia. Furthermore, interventions for adult problems were excluded.
A total of 1172 potentially relevant papers were found at the primary searching activities. However, after different levels of elimination, only 14 papers were decided to meet the criteria fully.

There were few relevant treatments, but they were divergent regarding the techniques used and the cognitive functions trained. Among them, however, those who were found to be more decisively influential were Computerized Executive Functions Training (CEFT), Computerized Working Memory Training (CWMT), Action Video Games Training (AVG), and Visual Spatial Attention training. Careful examination of these treatments shows that most computerized training tasks could have been executed in non–computerized versions. Indeed, computerization for most tasks is only a methodological strategy to implement training in exact timing. Meanwhile, some negative evidence was also found, suggesting that some of the executive functions training that has been frequently claimed to be effective were completely useless on children with learning disabilities. Although this evidence is relatively negligible, subsequent work is needed to determine the effectiveness of each treatment. On the other hand, some of the most effective intervention programs were organized in such a way as to take, explicitly or implicitly, a central or supervisory system of executive functions for granted.

Despite the lack of certainty regarding the effectiveness of each of the interventions individually in improving learning problems, it seems that to improve children's reading and writing skills, using programs based on executive functions as a combination of several designed components is a more practical approach.