Diagnostic system and method for phonological awareness, phonological processing, and reading skill testing

Abstract

A diagnostic system and method for evaluating one or more phonological awareness, phonological processing and reading skills of an individual to detect phonological awareness, phonological processing and reading skill deficiencies in the individual so that the risk of developing a reading deficiency is reduced and existing reading deficiencies are remediated. The system may use graphical games to test the individual's ability in a plurality of different phonological awareness, phonological processing and reading skills. The system may use speech recognition technology to interact with the games. The system may include a module for providing motivation to a user of the system being tested.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION [0001] This application is a continuation-in-part application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 350,791, filed Jul. 9, 1999, entitled “Diagnostic System and Method for Phonological Awareness, Phonological Processing, and Reading Skill Testing” and owned by the same assignee as the present invention.APPENDIX [0002] This disclosure includes and incorporates Appendix A which is attached. Appendix A is 24 pages and discloses details of the data graphing and reporting functionality of the diagnostic system and method for phonological awareness, phonological processing and reading skill testing. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] This invention relates generally to a diagnostic system and method for testing one or more different areas of phonological awareness, phonological processing, verbal short term memory, rapid access naming, phonemic decoding and reading fluency in order to determine if the individual being tested is at risk to having reading problems and t...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012] The diagnostic system and method for evaluating phonological awareness and processing skills and related pre-reading and reading skills in accordance with the invention provides a system for identifying individuals, such as children in kindergarten through second grade, who are likely to experience academic failure due to phonological processing deficits and a lack of phonological awareness. The system may also determine the relative weaknesses and strengths of the individual or group of individuals in different phonological awareness and processing areas or related reading skills in order to help develop appropriate intervention and curriculum activities to improve the weak skills and areas. The system may also track, over time, an individual's development or a group's development of various phonological awareness and processing skills and relating reading skills and establish a baseline so that the effectiveness of instructional methods may be evaluated. The system may identify individual with weak phonological awareness and processing skills and correct those skills before the individual develops a reading problem. In a preferred embodiment, the diagnostic tool may be one or more software applications being executed on a Web server so that the diagnostic tool may be an Internet or World Wide Web (the Web) based tool that provides an easily accessible and affordable screening tool to help parents determine, in the comfort of their own home, if their child is at-risk for academic failure due to phonological awareness and processing deficits. The system may also suggest solutions (training modules that train a particular phonological awareness, phonological processing skill or a related reading or pre-reading skill) for a parent to consider in correcting the phonological awareness and processing deficits.

[0013] In more detail, the diagnostic system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention may include one or more software applications that may be stored on a portable media, such as a CD or a zip disk or may be stored on a server. The diagnostic system provides various advantages over conventional diagnostic tools. The system permits more standardized administration of the tests that leads to more reliable assessments. The system also permits more efficient, accurate and reliable scoring and tracking of an individual's phonological awareness and processing abilities so that the individual's progress may be determined by comparing the various test results to one another and comparing the results of tests given at different time to each other. The system may be administered by people who do not necessarily understand the intricacies of phonological awareness and processing skills. In addition, the system may be administered simultaneously to a large number of individuals since each children may use a separate computer to complete the tests. Finally, the engaging graphical game format of the tests within the diagnostic system may reduce an individual's test anxiety so that a more accurate test may be conducted.

Problems solved by technology

For inefficient and disabled readers, the reading impasse exists in the perceptual and conceptual elusiveness of phonemes.

Children with reading problems have been found to perform poorly on memory span tasks for items with verbal labels.

In addition, phonological processing deficits have been identified by researchers as the most probable cause of reading-related learning disabilities.

The problem is that there is no diagnostic tool currently available to help professionals and the school personnel to identify children who are at-risk due to phonological awareness deficit and to help plan, evaluate and document the effectiveness of intervention and instructional methods.

None of these conventional assessment tools are software based and therefore have limitations.

For example, these conventional assessment tools must be manually administered so that the testing is not necessarily standardized since each test giver may give the test in a slightly different manner that reduces the reliability of the resulting assessment.

These manually administered assessment tools also make the scoring, charting and comparison of the test results more difficult.

In addition, the number of children who may be tested at any one time is limited to one child for each test administrator.

These conventional assessment tests may also cause test anxiety that may cause the test results to inaccurately reflect the child's abilities.

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