Screening tool identifies kids at high risk for reading disorders

Screening tool identifies kids at high risk for reading disorders | Image Credit: Contemporary Pediatrics

A new study found that standard scores on an online reading screening tool correlate with those on a gold-standard reading test, suggesting that the tool provides an effective way to identify children at highest risk of having poor reading skills.

Study participants were 41 children (78% boys) with a mean age of 9.5 years who were being treated at a clinic for a variety of neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral conditions, most often attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, autism, and learning disabilities. Participants took the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) test, which is set up like a computer game and asks the child to differentiate a set of increasingly difficult pronounceable nonwords (pseudowords) from words in English. The test takes 15 minutes to complete. Participants also completed the Woodcock-Johnson IV Letter-Word Identification (LWID) and Word Attack (WA,) and investigators compared the association between participants’ results on ROAR and the aggregate LWID and WA scores—the Basic Reading Skills score.

The ROAR raw scores strongly correlated with those on the standardized tests. Further analysis showed that ROAR had high sensitivity and specificity for distinguishing between good and poor readers. Investigators therefore concluded that ROAR provides an excellent way to identify children at highest risk of having poor reading skills.

THOUGHTS FROM DR. FARBER

Here is another free online tool to use in the office; the child can be screened while you are seeing another patient. One caveat is that the “gold standard” tests, the LWID and WA, are very basic and not the best for deciding if a child is good at reading for information.

Reference:

Barrington E, Sarkisian SM, Feldman HM, Yeatman JD. Rapid online assessment of reading (ROAR): Evaluation of an online tool for screening reading skills in a developmental-behavioral pediatrics clinic. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2023;44(9):e604-e610. Doi:10.1097/DBP.0000000000001226.