Acquired Dyslexia Modeling and Treatment
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age18-85
SponsorRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
About this trial
This study is a low-risk, early phase 1, multicenter trial to test the use of a computational (neural network) cognitive model of reading to simulate acquired dyslexia and its treatment. The aim is to determine whether there is an advantage to receiving the treatment the model predicts to be advantageous compared to the alternative treatment. All participants will receive two full rounds of treatment. A round of treatment will consist of either phonomotor treatment (PMT) or semantic feature analysis (SFA) for 60 hours, distributed over 5 days a week for 2 hours a day.
Eligibility criteria
This trial does not accept healthy volunteersQualifiers
Fluent in English as a first language pre-stroke by self report.
Normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
Normal or aided hearing.
Left hemisphere ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke (as verified by a structural brain scan).
Disqualifiers
Diagnosed pre-stroke neurological disease affecting the brain other than left hemisphere stroke.
Severe apraxia of speech (determined by consensus judgment among speech-language pathologists).
History of learning disabilities such as developmental dyslexia or current self-reported major psychiatric disorders.
Inability to undergo, or provide a copy of, a post-stroke brain imaging scan.
Trial design
Design model
Crossover
Treatments tested in this trial
Phono-Motor Therapy
BehavioralOrthographic stimuli (letters) are introduced from the beginning as each phoneme is being trained. This maintains the focus on phonology, while emphasizing its relevance to reading. PMT consists of an initial phase focused on training of individual phonemes and phoneme sequences in spoken language, followed by written language tasks. English phonemes are first trained in isolation, followed by phoneme sequences in words and pseudowords. They are trained multi-modally through emphasis on auditory, motor, tactile-kinesthetic, visual, and orthographic representations for each consonant and vowel. When sequences are introduced, focus on phonology is maintained by training on pseudowords first before real words are introduced. Participants work on identifying, repeating, parsing, blending, and manipulating phonemes that make up the pseudoword and word stimuli. To maintain focus on phonology, pictures and definitions of the stimuli are never shown or discussed.
Semantic Feature Analysis
BehavioralSFA activates semantic features of the target word to help retrieve the spoken form of the word. To target reading, a modified SFA is used with written words rather than pictures as the primary materials. Pictures are instead included for each word as a semantic feature. Stimuli will consist of 80 highly imageable nouns with a range of word frequencies. During treatment the therapist will present a written noun and ask the participant a series of questions about the features of that noun. For example, if the presented noun is "juice", the therapist would have the participant select the corresponding picture from an array of pictures. The therapist then would ask, "what do you do with it?" (eliciting a feature from the "function" category) and "where do you store it in your home?" (eliciting a feature from the "context" category). This is done for a total of 6 categories of semantic features. The process is repeated until the participant reads the noun correctly three times in a row.
Treatment groups
12 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groupsGroup A: Model-matchedExperimental treatment 2 interventions
Group B: Model-non-matchedActive comparator 2 interventions
Trial outcomes
Primary outcomes
1
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - III
The WRMT-III is a standardized measure of reading skills.
Time frame
Baseline, following the first 60 hours of therapy, and following the final 60 hours of therapy.2
Test words and pseudowords
Change in accuracy of reading 120 test words and 80 pseudowords
Time frame
Baseline, following the first 60 hours of therapy, and following the final 60 hours of therapy.Secondary outcomes
1
Western Aphasia Battery - Revised
The WAB - R is a standard measure of aphasia severity. It determines both the degree of aphasia and whether treatment has any impact on aspects of aphasia other than acquired dyslexia.
Time frame
Baseline, following the first 60 hours of therapy, and following the final 60 hours of therapy.2
Comprehensive Aphasia Test - Disability Quotient
The CAT - DQ is a self-report measure of subjectively perceived degree of disability.
Time frame
Baseline, following the first 60 hours of therapy, and following the final 60 hours of therapy.Sponsors and contacts
Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Lead sponsor
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Collaborator
Source ClinicalTrials.gov