"E-readers are more effective for some readers with dyslexia than paper," BBC News reports. The story comes from a study of just over 100 students with dyslexia. Researchers compared the students' reading comprehension and speed using an Apple iPod Touch and the same text on paper. The test on the iPod Touch was formatted to display only a few words per line. In some students, reading speed and comprehension was better when using the device compared with reading longer lines of text on paper. But the results of this small study are more mixed than reports suggest. Only students with very poor visual attention benefited from using the e-readers. Visual attention is the ability to process multiple visual elements, such as the words in a sentence or the letters in a word, simultaneously. It is thought that in some people, difficulties with reading spring from problems with this ability.
As the researchers point out, it may be the device's ability to display text in large font and short lines, rather than the device itself, that benefits some students.If you are affected by dyslexia and you have access to an e-reader, you could experiment with the settings of your e-reader to see if it makes reading easier. In the experiment, the e-readers were customised to display only a few words per line; the paper equivalent had the normal amount of words per line.The study used a randomised crossover design in which participants served as their own controls. In other words, all participants used both methods of reading and the results were compared. Dyslexia is characterised by difficulties in learning to read and is one of the most common learning difficulties. People with dyslexia are thought to have difficulties "decoding" words. They have particular difficulty identifying "phonemes", which are the basic sounds of speech – for example, the "s" sound in "sat" is a phoneme.This makes it difficult for people with dyslexia to link the sound to the letter for that sound, or blend sounds into words, and they often find it hard to recognise words or sound words out. They may also have problems with verbal memory and verbal processing speed.
The researchers say that in recent years, studies have suggested that people with dyslexia may have problems with visual attention and how they control their eye movements when reading. This has led to the suggestion that adjusting how text is displayed may be helpful. In particular, a reading method where each line of text spans only a few words has been proposed. While in previous decades this would be impracticable using printed material, it is now possible through a small-screen handheld device such as a smartphone or tablet computer using large fonts.
Manfaat yang mingkin pencipta sendiri pun tak terfikir..syabas
Last edited by chewan on 24-9-2013 07:00 PM
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