E-readers make reading easier for dyslexic children, study shows

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E-readers may help improve the reading abilities of children with dyslexia, according to Nature World News.

In a study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers studied 103 students with dyslexia to see if e-readers would help them improve their reading efficiency and understanding.

By studying the eye movements of students as they read, researchers were able to determine that e-readers helped make text more legible to students with dyslexia – likely because the lines of text on e-readers are shorter compared to regular books.

Additionally, the e-readers helped dyslexic students improve their understanding of blocks of text, according to Counsel and Heal.

The study’s authors said they are excited about the potential for e-readers to supplement traditional methods of therapy for dyslexic students.

"The high school students we tested…had the benefit of many years of exceptional remediation, but even so, if they have visual attention deficits they will eventually hit a plateau, and traditional approaches can no longer help," said study author Matthew H. Schneps, director of the Laboratory for Visual Learning at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and lead author of the research, in a news release. "Our research showed that the e-readers help these students reach beyond those limits."

Dyslexia is characterized by an inability to concentrate on letters within words, or entire lines of text on a page, and it affects 10 percent of children in the U.S.

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