It looks like a user friendly system that will enable me to quickly and easily collect data from my participants.
James Maguire
Dyslexia is a common learning disability that is characterised by difficulties learning to read. Maintaining a positive attitude towards reading is crucial to improving reading ability. Therefore, improving dyslexic individual’s reading attitude may help them to improve their reading achievement and overcome their disability. This study aims to do this using video self-modelling (VSM).
VSM is a behavioural intervention that involves participants watching carefully created videos of themselves in order to learn new behaviours. VSM has been used to improve the reading ability of individuals with learning disabilities in the past. However, there is no previous research that has attempted to use VSM to modify reading attitudes or attitudes in general. Thus this application of VSM in this study is unique and its effects need to be assessed.
The reading attitudes survey that will be used in this study comprises four subscales measuring attitudes toward recreational reading in print settings, recreational reading in digital settings, academic reading in print settings, and academic reading in digital settings. It is thought that this model accurately reflects how young people classify their reading in this digital age. Administering this scale before and after the intervention and at a three month follow up will determine if VSM has altered the participants’ attitudes.
Each participant in this study will receive four videos and a tablet PC to watch them on. Each video will present the participant silently reading one of the four types of text then have them look directly at the camera and give a self affirmation of their reading behaviour. This study will use a multiple baseline design across participants, however, there will be a different specified order each participant watches their videos to assess if there is an order effect. In effect there will be a multiple-baseline across behaviours (types of reading) nested within the multiple-baseline design across participants.
During the intervention the participants will be asked to keep a daily reading diary. This diary will consist of four questions that record if the participants have read any of the different types of text that day and a scale that will measure how they felt about their reading. The daily reading diary will reveal the immediate effects each VSM tape has on the participants affect towards reading.
As a result, this study will test if VSM can change the reading attitudes of individuals with dyslexia, with the hypothesis that attitudes will change for the better for some if not all kinds of reading.
