Company Profile Educational Help, Inc.

Reading Success Lab Team

James 'Mike' Royer, Ph.D.

James Mike Royer Ph.D., Director of the Laboratory for the Assessment and Training of Academic Skills, UMass Amherst, responds to questions about Current Research On Finding Solutions To Reading Problems

Jeremy Wise Ph.D.
Responds To Questions about the Software.

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FREE Reading and Dyslexia Screening software

Educational Help, Inc. Company Profile

Welcome! We are pleased to offer software that works from the lab to the home, with children through adults of all ages. We developed the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software and released it first, as CAAS for Researchers an later through the Reading Success Lab for parents. With this release of the Reading Success Lab for home use we are empowering parents as well as educators and researchers in the assessment of reading difficulties, with intervention exercises for improving reading comprehension and reassessment testing.

The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software has been tested and utilized the past 15 years through the Laboratory for the Assessment and Training of Academic Skills (LATAS) to help readers overcome the challenges of dyslexia.

The breakthrough assessment technique we pioneered is to measure how quickly the reader answers each test question. By measuring accuracy and timeliness, we can identify the exact point in the reading process where reading is breaking down. If the reader takes time to answer the question correctly, then at that point the reading skill is not automatic. Intervention is needed to address the specific breakdown in reading skills.

Our approach to reading intervention is very simple, and backed by extensive research and published studies. It's not sufficient to teach the dyslexic reader how to sound out words. This results in slow and halting reading as the reader struggles to identify each word. If reading is halting, then reading comprehension is lost. Our software programs help increase the sight vocabulary of the reader. If the reader can see and instantly recognize the word, then comprehension is automatic. The larger the sight vocabulary, the faster the reader can read and the greater the comprehension of the material.

We invite you to explore our website, learn more about dyslexia and intervention, and download take the Reading Success Lab FREE Reading Assessment Test to help determine the nature of the reading difficulty.

Development Of The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software

In 1991 software developer Jeremy Wise, Ph.D. and University of Massachusetts, Psychology Professor James M. Royer, Ph.D began working together to develop a computer-based a psychology lab tool for assessing cognitive skill proficiency based on the leading theories of cognitive development.

The basic requirements of the system were to be able to present a wide variety of language based stimuli on the computer and measure both the accuracy and speed of response. A variety of response modes were to be supported, voice and button presses. As both accuracy and speed of response are indicative of skill competency but neither by itself is a measure of skill competency, accuracy and speed were to be combined into a single variable.

Given that the year was 1991 software development for the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software was designed to run under the DOS operating system for the PC environment using C/C++ DOS-based software development tools. The system that was developed had software with a completely graphical interface and two response boxes, a "participant" box connecting through the system serial port, and a "scorer" box connecting through the system parallel port.

A variety of tasks were developed for use by the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software: letter naming, word naming, sentence semantics, math facts, etc. A number of CAAS systems were sold to university research labs through the 1990s. The software was upgraded to the Windows™ operating system in the mid 1990s.

15 years Of Academic Research

The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software has been used since 1991 at the LATAS, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software is the laboratory's primary tool for the assessment of reading disabilities and for intervention strategies.

The LATAS approach to academic assessment and skill improvement is based on cognitive theories of academic performance. These theories suggest that a complex cognitive skill such as reading can be broken into "sub-skills" that must be performed accurately and rapidly in order to accomplish the complex skill.

So for example, skilled reading is dependent on being able to identify letters, and the meaning of words rapidly and accurately. Word meanings are then used to construct interpretations of larger text segments such as clauses, and paragraphs.

In the skilled reader, activities below the comprehension level must be performed automatically" and without conscious thought. This means that skilled readers not aware that letters and words are being identified and that the meaning words are being brought to conscious awareness.

Many participants having academic difficulties are unable to effortlessly identify letters, numbers, and words. They also often have difficulty in determining words mean and in performing relatively simple math tasks such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The LATAS efforts are directed toward first identifying the simple skills that may be blocking further educational progress, and to then strengthen those weak skills, thereby removing one barrier to academic achievement.

At the highest level, they measure listening and reading comprehension and a variety of mathematical problem solving activities. The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software measures speed and accuracy of simple perception, letter identification, word identification, non-word (pronounceable letter strings such as PLOK) identification, identification, sentence processing, number identification, and performance on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems.

We also can assess some of these skills in Spanish, and our math assessments cover performance up to algebra. The Cognitive Aptitude Assessment Software provides information about how fast and accurately participants can perform these activities.

Instructional efforts are guided by the results of these assessments. We identify the lowest level skill that appears to be blocking higher level academic performance and then engage the participant in activities designed to strengthen that skill. The activities prescribed are designed to improve both the speed and accuracy of performance.

When a participant has improved a targeted skill to a sufficient degree, focus is switched to a higher level skill. For example, if a participant was slow letter processing, they might work on letters for a while, then move to word processing, and then to activation of word meanings, and finally to sentence processing.

After competency is attained in lower level skills, the participant begins to work on strategic learning skills. Students are taught to use techniques that enable them to produce visual representations of the material they are studying that help them to identify the important content in the textbooks they are studying.

This research program is based on the assumption that text comprehension and learning from text involves several levels of cognitive processing. At the lowest level we extract the surface meaning of the text we are reading. At a higher level we develop the ability to make inferences about the content of the text. And at a yet higher level we develop the ability to recognize "big ideas" in the text. For instance, we develop the ability to look at a physics problem and recognize that the problem involves a particular physical. The laboratory's goal is to develop procedures that can assess competency at each of these levels and then examine possible uses for the procedures that we have developed. So, for example, the procedures could be used to track progress through instructional programs or to select individuals for positions requiring high levels of competency.