In a new Mayo Clinic study, researchers examined the physical act of reading to see if practicing eye movements in school could lead to better early reading fluency.
“There are studies that show that 34 percent of third graders are not proficient in reading, and if you are not proficient in reading by third or fourth grade there is a four times higher likelihood that you will drop out of high school,” says Amaal Starling, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and co-author of the study published in Clinical Pediatrics.
Dr. Starling says that the purpose of the new study was to determine the effect of six weeks of in-school training using the King-Devick remediation software on reading fluency. This software allows people to practice rapid number naming which requires eye movements in a left to right orientation. It teaches the physical act of reading.
“The results of this pilot study suggest that the King-Devick remediation software may be effective in significantly improving reading fluency through rigorous practice of eye movements,” says Dr. Starling. “What our study also found was that there was an even greater improvement between first and third grade versus third and fourth graders, which means there may be a critical learning period that will determine reading proficiency.”
