Remedial Interventions for Children with Reading Disabilities: Speech Perception—An Effective Component

The effects of two types of phonological training in children with reading disabilities (RD) were examined. One of the programs (SP/LPA) trained children in speech discrimination, letter–sound correspondence, and phonemic awareness. The other program (LPA) trained chil-dren only in letter–sound correspondence and phonemic awareness. The effects of these programs were compared with a control group. Thirty-five children with RD were trained in small groups five times a week for 4 weeks. The results indicated that both experimental groups improved in phonemic awareness compared to the control group but that only the SP/LPA group scored higher than the control group in reading. T here is considerable agreementthat a phonological processingdeficit is the major cause of reading disabilities (for a review, see Elbro, 1996). According to this hypoth-esis, a specific deficit in some aspect of phonological processing impairs the understanding and application of the grapheme-to-phoneme translation rou-tine (see Rack, Snowling, & Olson