Efficacy of a Visuomotor-Based Intervention for Children with Reading and Spelling Disabilities: A Pilot Study

We predicted that Arabic-speaking children with specific learning disabilities in reading (dyslexia) and spelling (in writing) benefit from a visuomotor-based intervention programme for the development of letter knowledge and the improvement of word and pseudo-word decoding as well as spelling (dictation). It was predicted that the mediation of visuomotor training should be effective since the characteristics of Arabic script require such high-level functioning for the development of literacy skills. Participants (n = 20) were randomly divided in two groups, an experimental group (n = 10; mean age =125.50 months ± 3.24) and a control group (n = 10; mean age = 124.10 months ± 3.31). Results revealed that the post-intervention measures were better achieved in the experimental group than pre-intervention ones, which confirms the efficacy of this visuomotor intervention programme.