Tutoring Young Children at Risk of Developing Reading Difficulties: Effects of an Early Tutoring Intervention on Literacy Skills and Executive Functions

This study investigated the effects of an early literacy intervention on measures of literacy and executive functions in the first year of Danish primary school. The program targeted six- to seven-year-old children at risk of developing reading difficulties and made use of tutoring and multi-sensory methods. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in eight primary schools with a total sample of 72 students and measured the effects on three standardized measures of literacy: decoding, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness. We also examined the effects on five standardized measures related to executive functions: consistency of attention, inattention, impulse control, verbal memory, and working memory. The tutors wrote short diary notes for each tutoring session, which we used to examine implementation fidelity. The primary analysis indicates that the treatment group improved more than the control group on all but one of the outcome measures; however, the differences are not statistically significant. The exception to the improvements is verbal memory, for which the estimate is negative, small, and insignificant. Exploratory analyses indicate positive and significant effects on broader constructs of attention and literacy, and null effects on memory. The examination of implementation fidelity suggests that deviations from the program manual and contextual factors related to the level and progression of letter knowledge skills weakened the impact. Our results suggest testing the hypothesis that literacy tutoring improves executive functions in larger samples would be promising.