European researchers said on June 04 that offering reading materials with wider spacing between the letters can help dyslexic children read faster and better. In a sample of dyslexic children age eight to 14, extra-wide letter spacing doubled accuracy and increased reading speed by more than 20 percent, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists believe the approach worked because people with dyslexia are more affected than normal readers by a phenomenon known as "crowding," which makes a letter harder to identify when it is close to other letters.
"Our findings offer a practical way to ameliorate dyslexics' reading achievement without any training," said the study led by Marco Zorzi of the department of general psychology at Italy's University of Padova.
Researchers studied 54 Italian and 40 French dyslexic children, giving them a text made up of 24 short sentences to read in either standard or expanded letter spacing.
In the standard text, the words were printed in Times-Roman font with a 14 point print size (1 point = 0.353 mm in typesetting standards). In the expanded text, the space between letter was increased by 2.5 points, so the "space between i and l in the Italian word il (the) was 2.7 pt in normal text vs. 5.2 pt in spaced text," said the study.
The space between lines of text was also increased to show a proportional amount of white space on the page.
The children were given either French or Italian texts according to their native language, and the regular and extra-space sessions were scheduled two weeks apart to minimise the effect that memorisation might have on reading speed.
Not only did dyslexic children read faster, but the greatest benefits were observed in children who had the most problem identifying letters.