Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Mental timing and reading ach study "in press"

The following manuscript has been accepted for publication in the journal Psychology in the Schools. Yes...I am a coauthor and readers should check out my prior conflict of interest disclosure notice regarding my involvement as an external consultant to Interactive Metronome.

I will post more information once the article is formally published.
  • Taub, G., McGrew, K. & Keith, T. (in press). Improvements in interval time tracking and effects on reading achievement. Psychology in the Schools.
Abstract
  • This paper examines the effect of improvements in timing/rhythmicity on students’ reading achievement. A total of 86 participants, attending a public charter school receiving Title 1 funding, completed pre- and post-test measures of reading achievement from the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (Woodcock, McGrew, Mather, 2001), Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999a), Test of Word Reading Efficiency (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999b), and Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (Mather, Hamil, Allen, & Roberts, 2004). Students in the experimental group participated in a 4 week intervention designed to improve their timing/rhythmicity by reducing the latency in their response to a synchronized metronome beat, referred to as a synchronized metronome tapping (SMT) intervention. The intervention required, on average, 15 daily 50 minute sessions. The results from this non-academic intervention indicate the experimental group’s post-test scores on select measures of reading were significantly higher than the non-treatment control group’s scores at the end of 4 weeks. This paper provides a brief overview of domain-general cognitive abilities believed effected by SMT interventions and provides a preliminary hypothesis to explain how a non-academic intervention designed to improve timing/rhythmicity can demonstrate a statistically significant effect on students’ reading achievement scores.
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2 comments:

Chris Chatham said...

Congratulations! This is very interesting.

Can you point me toward information about how I might use measures of rhythmicity or tapping in 3 year-olds?

3-year olds are a difficult population to work with, and yet there are drastic changes in executive function at exactly this age. Thus I am always on the lookout for simple, easy-to-understand and quick-to-administer tests that may relate to higher cognitive function.

Something as "low-level" as synchronized tapping would be particularly interesting if it relates to EF (as I imagine it would, since you seem to have shown it relates to reading).

Kevin McGrew said...

Chris. Thanks for the comment. Currently I'm unaware of literature regarding these functions at the preschool level. When and if I find anything I'll be sure to make a post.