Promoting Word Recognition Skills Through a Digital Reading Intervention in Elementary School

Learning to read is one of the most critical challenges children develop during their elementary school years. Accurate and fluent word reading is essential for successful reading comprehension (Perfetti & Hart, 2002) and is particularly important at the early stages of reading development. Skilled readers can read words accurately and fast, whereas low-skilled readers persist in slow, error-prone letter-by-letter reading, specifically with longer and less frequent words. According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS; Germany: IGLU), about one quarter of fourth graders in Germany exhibit low reading skills by the end of elementary school (McElvany et al., 2023). These deficits in reading persist and are thus likely to negatively impact academic and professional careers. Given the stability of reading development processes, early intervention is crucial to address these deficient word recognition processes (Potocki et al., 2015). In this context, the training of the recognition of syllables as sublexical processing unit has been proven to be beneficial for promoting the accuracy and fluency of word recognition (Müller, Richter, & Karageorgos, 2020). However, due to the heterogeneity of reading difficulties, individualized, adaptive reading support is required, which is often challenging to implement in regular educational settings. Digital learning environments offer an ideal solution for providing this adaptive reading support. Therefore, the aim of the present dissertation was to develop a digital reading intervention for elementary school children with low reading skills, grounded in psychological reading research with a focus on the syllable. Moreover, the intervention incorporated established elements of digital learning programs, such as adaptive word materials, to facilitate independent and individualized practice for the children. The basis for the adaptivity of the developed digital reading intervention are prediction models for determining word difficulties by using linguistic characteristics of words that are presented in Article 1. In three studies, we examined the influence of word regularity, word length, word frequency, and orthographic neighborhood size on the accuracy and fluency of word recognition in a lexical decision task in second-, third-, and fourth-grade children. In Study 1 the predictive value of these word characteristics was examined across all three grade levels (N = 334, 55% female). In Study 2, we focused on second graders (N = 242, 50% female) to validate the models derived in a heterogeneous sample in the context of a more homogeneous sample. Furthermore, in Study 3, based on the same sample as Study 1, changes in the predictive values of these word characteristics across the elementary school years were investigated. The findings showed that linguistic word characteristics significantly predicted word difficulty in terms of accuracy and response latency. In addition, the influence of word characteristics on word difficulty varied by grade level, indicating gradual developmental changes in the reading process from an alphabetic to an orthographic strategy. Cross-validation with the independent sample of second graders confirmed the robustness and generalizability of the derived prediction models. Overall, the results provide deeper insights into the development of word recognition processes and highlight the importance of individualized, adaptive teaching materials. The derived prediction models can be used to draw samples of words with varying levels of difficulty for the development of adaptive reading tests and learning materials. Article 2 provides a detailed overview of the conceptualization and structure of the syllable-based digital reading intervention. The article highlights the potential of digital learning programs to improve educational outcomes and emphasizes the incorporation of gamified elements. These elements include embedding the digital reading intervention in a narrative with pedagogical agents and a reward system to motivate the children to continue with the reading intervention (Krath et al., 2021). Furthermore, the article emphasizes the importance of elements such as immediate feedback, adaptivity, and multimedia, which are particularly suitable for implementation in digital learning environments and contribute to improved learning outcomes (Chen et al., 2018). This comprehensive consideration illustrates the possibilities of digital reading promotion and their relevance for the use in the school and home settings. Article 3 presents an evaluation study that examined the effectiveness of the newly developed syllable-based digital reading intervention for German second graders with difficulties in visual word recognition. After receiving the 20-session intervention, children with low reading skills randomly assigned to the treatment group (n = 66) showed significant improvement in general word recognition and in phonological recoding processes compared to equally low-skilled untreated children in the wait-list group (n = 66). Orthographic decoding processes improved only in children with less severe impairments, whereas no significant improvements were found in text-level reading comprehension. Therefore, the results suggest that a syllable-based digital reading intervention is a promising approach for promoting word reading in children with word recognition difficulties and can serve as an effective intervention tool for this target group. In Article 4, the developed, evaluated, and published application MobiLe is presented in detail in the accompanying manual. Taken together, the four articles and study results of the present dissertation emphasize the central role of word recognition processes for the promotion of learning to read in elementary school. Furthermore, they underline the effectiveness of a syllable-based digital reading intervention, which is particularly suitable for addressing the individual reading skills of children due to its adaptive and motivating design. Although the presented studies extend existing knowledge about the development of word recognition processes in elementary school children and the design of digital reading interventions, further research is needed to gain deeper insight into the effectiveness of each of the digital gamified elements implemented.