Playing tasks for increase of vocabulary and teaching reading to non-readers

Abstract

The goal of this study was to develop a program of object-playing tasks to teach name-object relations, and to verify its effects on learning reading and writing. To teach reading participants were exposed to a computerized teaching program based on the stimulus equivalence paradigm. Thirteen students, aged seven to ten years old, participated in both teaching and object-playing tasks. These tasks were organized in three conditions. Condition one (Object) taught objects' naming and the second Condition (Ilustration) taught pictures' naming. In both conditions, the tasks made use of words that were taught in the reading and writing procedure. The third condition (Control) taught picture naming as well; however, these pictures were different from those used in the teaching program. Six words were taught, three non-familiar and three pseudo-words. The object-playing tasks were always completed before the teaching phases that targeted non-familiar and pseudo-words. All participants learned to name the objects or pictures that represented the aimed words of this study, however, the results did not indicate differences between in three conditions concerning reading acquisition. These results also suggest that the material format did not have a critical influence on the number of assessment sessions completed by participants. Instead, the critical variable on reading acquisition was the establishment of matching printed to dictated words from which reading emerged.