Grant: Operating Grant

Developmental dyslexia is a common reading disability. In addition to poor school performance, children with dyslexia may show mental health problems such as attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety, and social problems such as antisocial behaviour and homelessness. These academic and mental health issues may persist into adulthood, and negatively affect a person's job prospects and quality of life. Therefore, increasing reading skills in childhood is very important to their overall health as adults. There are few treatment programs, however, that have any research evidence supporting their effectiveness. A new reading intervention program called ABRACADABRA is being used in some Canadian elementary schools. This free web-based program has been shown to strengthen reading skills in children in primary grades, and it may be particularly successful in children with dyslexia. The goal of our research is to understand the brain regions and connections that are related to reading ability, while providing a rigorous scientific evaluation of the ABRACADABRA program. The results of our research will provide new evidence on the effectiveness of ABRACADABRA for treating reading disability. It will also reveal the brain changes that are correlated with improved reading skills.