Space Invaders video game could help prepare preschoolers at risk for dyslexia to learn to read

A study of preschoolers at risk for developmental dyslexia found that playing “Space Invaders Extreme 2” for 45 minutes a day, four times a week, for a month and a half improved their ability to hear and to manipulate the individual sounds of words (phonemic awareness). This improvement was greater than those obtained in the groups who received speech therapy and played other non-action games. The research was published in Npj Science of learning.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition, spelling, and decoding. These difficulties are unexpected given the child’s other cognitive abilities and the fact that he has learned to read and write. It is a neurological disease with a genetic component, so it is often hereditary.

Dyslexia is most often identified at the start of primary school. Children begin formal reading instruction at this time and the reading difficulties experienced by children with dyslexia become apparent. Although dyslexia cannot be prevented, early intervention and targeted training can significantly mitigate the risk. This is why researchers are very interested in identifying children at risk of dyslexia as early as possible and developing effective training methods to help them acquire reading skills.

Study author Sara Bertoni and her colleagues note that play is essential to children’s development. Play creates an enriched environment that supports cognitive development and learning through the activation of specific combinations of large-scale neural networks in the brain. In this context, action video games could be particularly useful because children are motivated to play them and the cognitive demands they create put “the brain in a more plastic state.”

These researchers conducted a study to test whether deficits in cognitive abilities known to be necessary for reading development could be overcome if children with these deficits played action video games. They focused on three factors known to predict reading development and to be deficient in children with dyslexia: phonemic awareness, phonological working memory, and rapid naming.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonological working memory refers to the ability to temporarily hold and process sound information, while rapid naming involves the ability to quickly name a sequence of letters, numbers, colors, or random objects.

The study participants were 120 preschool children, aged approximately 5–6 years, recruited at the IRCCS Scientific Institute “Eugenio Medea” (Bosisio Parini, Italy). The study authors asked them to complete a series of reading-related tasks and found that 79 of them could be classified as at risk for dyslexia.

They divided children at risk of dyslexia into four groups. One group would play the action video game “Space Invaders Extreme 2” for 45 minutes, four times a week for a month and a half. The second group played a series of mini-games for the same period of time and with the same intensity. The third group followed phonological training with a speech therapist (usual training for dyslexia), consisting of 21 individual sessions of 45 minutes spread over 3.7 months. The fourth group was a waiting list group (not receiving treatment). Children classified as no risk did not undergo any treatment.

Before and after treatment, or at two designated time points (for untreated groups), participants completed neuropsychological assessments measuring phonemic awareness, phonological working memory, and rapid naming.

The results showed that the group playing “Space Invaders Extreme 2” had significantly higher improvement in phonemic awareness compared to all other groups. This was the case both when the groups were considered individually and when the other two treatment groups were combined. A follow-up assessment six months later showed that the changes observed in the “Space Invaders Extreme 2” group persisted.

“Our results showed that AVGs (action video games, Space Invaders 2 in this case) induce a significant, lasting and clinically relevant effect on the adjustment of phonological representations in pre-readers at risk of DD (developmental dyslexia ), speeding up the sampling rate of sensory evidence and reducing the slow shift of attention,” the researchers concluded.

“According to these results, AVG could be exploited to prevent multisensory processing difficulties in several neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by early dysfunction of attentional deployment, such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, developmental coordination disorder and autism spectrum disorder, as well as in typically developing children.

The study highlights the potential effect of action video games on the development of cognitive skills necessary for the acquisition of reading skills. However, it should be noted that the study only used one action video game and included children of a very specific age. It’s unclear exactly what elements of Space Invaders 2 Extreme facilitated the observed effects. It is also unclear whether these effects would be obtained in children older or younger than those included in the study.

The article titled “Action video games normalize phonemic awareness in pre-readers at risk for developmental dyslexia” was written by Sara Bertoni, Chiara Andreola, Sara Mascheretti, Sandro Franceschini, Milena Ruffino, Vittoria Trezzi, Massimo Molteni , Maria Enrica Sali, Antonio Salandi, Ombretta Gaggi, Claudio Palazzi, Simone Gori and Andrea Facoett.