The 'speaking tablet' as an aid in the acquisition of reading skills by dyslexic children

Bouma and Legein suggested that a delayed (internal) transformation from the written word into its corresponding sound image could provide an explanation for the poor reading ability of dyslexic readers. Recent speech technology offers the opportunity of directly available synthetic speech. This allows us to investigate whether a di rect translation of written words into their spoken sounds, by means of a speaking tablet, can help reduce the problems of dyslexic readers. In the present study, 20 dyslexic and 24 normal readers practised reading polysyllabic words, half of the subjects being allowed to use the speaking tablet during training. The number of correctly read words and the reading time was measured before and after the training period. Training increased the number of trained words correctly read by all groups of subjects, but more so for the group of dyslexic readers having practised with the speaking tablet. The speaking tablet was also found to have a positive motivational effect on dyslexic subjects. The reading speed for trained words increased, but not differentially with the two training methods. The effects of training did not generalize much to unt rained words.