Reading, understanding and pragmatic skills: comparative investigation of the behaviour of normolectors and readers with SLD

Head: Francesca Santulli

Year 2018

The project is a continuation and extension of the research started in the previous academic year, focused on silent reading and on the effects of the training called SuperReading.

On the one hand, the population involved in the surveys, which now exceeds 300 subjects, distributed in the two groups of normotypical readers and those with SLD, has been expanded. The updated data confirm the positive results already obtained in the past.

In order to increase the reliability of these results, a process of collecting control data was launched at the same time, selecting a population similar to that of the test group by age and training characteristics. Similarly, the same standardised reading tests used for previous surveys were proposed to a control group. The first data on this last group, which includes normotypical and SLD readers, indicate that the improvements obtained between the first and second administration (presumably attributable to a recall effect) are still statistically significantly lower than those obtained by the test group.

Another line of research concerned the collection of data relating to the pragmatic skills of subjects, measured with the standardised test for Italian called APACS and with the BLED tests. The aim is to reflect on the pragmatic skills of subjects with SLD, who may have a relevant role in the general processes of understanding the text.

This part of the study provides information on the relevance of the methodologies adopted in the training, with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of the elements that compose it.