Serious games as a level playing field for early literacy:A behavioural and neurophysiological evaluation

Over de verschillende talen heen slaagt 10 tot 15% van de kinderen er niet in om het standaardniveau voor lezen te behalen. Dit maakt van vroege diagnostiek en behandeling van bestaande en potentiële leesproblemen een wereldwijde missie. In dit proefschrift wordt de ontwikkeling en beoordeling van een computergestuurd leesspel voor beginnende lezers van het Nederlands beschreven. Enerzijds is er een focus op de vraag hoe de efficiëntie van de training correct gemeten kan worden, anderzijds is dit project gericht op het onderzoeken van de gelijktijdige invloed van verschillende interventie-aspecten zoals doelgroep, inhoud van de training en individuele blootstelling aan het het spel. In een gerandomiseerde controle trial, werd een cross-sectionele steekproef van 286 kinderen uit Nederland en België verwezen naar een programma dat bestond uit een exclusief regulier schoolcurriculum, of een programma waarin daarenboven één van twee computergestuurde spellen voor het trainen van lezen of rekenen werden toegevoegd. Ondanks het feit dat verschillende kortetermijnverbeteringen konden worden vastgesteld in lees-gerelateerde competenties en hersenrespons kon worden waargenomen na 7 weken speeltijd, vertaalde dit zich niet in beter lezen 18 maanden na de training. Toch vormt dit proefschrift een uitbreiding op ons huidige begrip van computergestuurde leesinterventies door het gecombineerd gebruiken van psychometrische testen, de data die konden worden verkregen uit het spel, de neurofysiologische opnames met EEG en de toepassing van geavanceerde statistische methoden. De resultaten hebben verschillende gevolgen voor de creatie en het gebruik van digitale leermaterialen in spelvorm, hetgeen op lange termijn mogelijk kinderen over de hele wereld kan helpen

Study strategies of first-year undergraduates with and without dyslexia and the effect of gender

For students to be successful in higher education, they need not only have motivation and sufficient intellectual ability, but also a wide range of study skills as well as the metacognitive ability to determine when a change in strategy is needed. We examined whether first-year undergraduates with dyslexia (N = 100) differ from peers without learning disabilities (N = 100) in the use of study strategies. The Learning and Study Strategies Inventory was used and potential gender differences were investigated. Matched for age, gender and field of study, fluid intelligence scores were comparable between groups. The self-reports showed that knowledge of test taking strategies was more limited in the dyslexic group. Also, 'fear of failure' was higher in the dyslexic students. Further analyses revealed group x gender interactions for motivation, time management and fear of failure, with female undergraduates outperforming their male counterparts. Implications for secondary education and university, as well as college student support services are discussed

Dynamic assessment of the effectiveness of digital game-based literacy training in beginning readers: a cluster randomised controlled trial

In this article, we report on a study evaluating the effectiveness of a digital game-based learning (DGBL) tool for beginning readers of Dutch, employing active (math game) and passive (no game) control conditions. This classroom-level randomized controlled trial included 247 first graders from 16 classrooms in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The intervention consisted of 10 to 15 min of daily playing during school time for a period of up to 7 weeks. Our outcome measures included reading fluency, phonological skills, as well as purpose built in-game proficiency levels to measure written lexical decision and letter speech sound association. After an average of 28 playing sessions, the literacy game improved letter knowledge at a scale generalizable for all children in the classroom compared to the two control conditions. In addition to a small classroom wide benefit in terms of reading fluency, we furthermore discovered that children who scored high on phonological awareness prior to training were more fluent readers after extensive exposure to the reading game. This study is among the first to exploit game generated data for the evaluation of DGBL for literacy interventions

Dynamic assessment of the effectiveness of digital game-based literacy training in beginning readers:a cluster randomised controlled trial

In this article, we report on a study evaluating the effectiveness of a digital game-based learning (DGBL) tool for beginning readers of Dutch, employing active (math game) and passive (no game) control conditions. This classroom-level randomized controlled trial included 247 first graders from 16 classrooms in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The intervention consisted of 10 to 15 min of daily playing during school time for a period of up to 7 weeks. Our outcome measures included reading fluency, phonological skills, as well as purpose built in-game proficiency levels to measure written lexical decision and letter speech sound association. After an average of 28 playing sessions, the literacy game improved letter knowledge at a scale generalizable for all children in the classroom compared to the two control conditions. In addition to a small classroom wide benefit in terms of reading fluency, we furthermore discovered that children who scored high on phonological awareness prior to training were more fluent readers after extensive exposure to the reading game. This study is among the first to exploit game generated data for the evaluation of DGBL for literacy interventions

Public perspectives on protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy: A survey study

Background: The extent to which people implement government-issued protective measures is critical in preventing further spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Our study aimed to describe the public belief in the effectiveness of protective measures, the reported implementation of these measures, and to identify communication channels used to acquire information on COVID-19 in European countries during the early stage of the pandemic. Methods and findings: An online survey available in multiple languages was disseminated starting on March 19th, 2020. After five days, we computed descriptive statistics for countries with more than 500 respondents. Each day, we assessed enacted community containment measures by stage of stringency (I-IV). In total, 9,796 adults responded, of whom 8,611 resided in the Netherlands (stage III), 604 in Germany (stage III), and 581 in Italy (stage IV). To explore possible dynamics as containment strategies intensified, we also included 1,365 responses submitted during the following week. Participants indicated support for governmental measures related to avoiding social gatherings, selective closure of public places, and hand hygiene and respiratory measures (range for all measures: 95.0%-99.7%). Respondents from the Netherlands less frequently considered a complete social lockdown effective (59.2%), compared to respondents in Germany (76.6%) or Italy (87.2%). Italian residents applied enforced social distancing measures more frequently (range: 90.2%-99.3%, German and Dutch residents: 67.5%-97.0%) and self-initiated hygienic and social distancing behaviors (range: 36.3%-96.6%, German and Dutch residents: 28.3%-95.7%). Respondents reported being sufficiently informed about the outbreak and behaviors to avoid infection (range: 90.2%-91.1%). Information channels most commonly reported included television newspapers, official health websites, and social media. One week later, we observed no major differences in submitted responses. Conclusions: During the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, belief in the effectiveness of protective measures among survey respondents from three European countries was high and participants reported feeling sufficiently informed. In March 2020, implementation of measures differed between countries and were highest among respondents from Italy, who were subjected to the most stringent lockdown measures and greatest COVID-19 burden in Europe during this period

Open Data of a cluster-randomized trial of GraphoGame-NL in Groningen, The Netherlands and Ghent, Belgium

This repository contains the data from a cluster randomized trial testing the effectiveness of a digital game-based learning tool for beginning readers of Dutch at the onset of first grade. The study offered participation to all 312 children enrolled into 16 classrooms at 8 schools in Groningen, The Netherlands and Ghent in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Randomization took place at the classroom level into treatment groups of the reading intervention (GraphoGame-NL), an active control group playing math content in the same gaming framework (GraphoGame-NL-Math) and a passive control group only attending classroom activities. The intervention consisted of 10 to 15 minutes of daily playing during school time for a period of up to 7 weeks. We collected data on nonverbal intelligence, reading fluency, phonological skills, and rapid automatized naming. In addition, we measured written lexical decision and letter speech sound association with purpose built in-game levels. In this repository we deposit the data of 266 children who consented to study participation and completed the assessments, of which 247 adhered to the intervention and played at least 20 sessions. We provide two data frames: one with results from the behavioural pen-and-paper tests, and one for the single trial results from the in-game assessments. The OSF wiki contains detailed information of the variables in both dataframes and also the code to open them in R