Dore Talk

Not to be discouraging at all (sooooo many people benefit from the programme) but it would be ignorant not to include such opinions and evidence. Interested in your thoughts!

 

Curing dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by training motor co-ordination: Miracle or myth?

Dorothy VM Bishop (2007)
Curing dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by training motor co-ordination: Miracle or myth?
Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 43 (10), 653–655.
doi:10.1111/j.1440-1754.2007.01225.x

 

Abstract:  

Dore Achievement Centres are springing up world-wide with a mission to cure cerebellar developmental delay, thought to be the cause of dyslexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome. Remarkable success is claimed for an exercise-based treatment that is designed to accelerate cerebellar development. Unfortunately, the published studies are seriously flawed. On measures where control data are available, there is no credible evidence of significant gains in literacy associated with this intervention. There are no published studies on efficacy with the clinical groups for whom the programme is advocated. It is important that family practitioners and paediatricians are aware that the claims made for this expensive treatment are misleading.

Key points:

1	The treatment offered by Dore Achievement Centres is being promoted as a "drug free" alternative to conventional treatment for ADHD, and as a ‘miracle cure’ for dyslexia. It is presented as having a neurological rationale and gains credibility by appearing to be medical treatment.
2	The publication of two papers in peer-reviewed scientific journal (Dyslexia) has been presented as giving further credibility to the treatment. However, the research community in this area has been dismayed that work of such poor standard has been published.
3	The research purporting to show efficacy of the treatment does not show sustained gains in literacy scores in treated vs. control children. Furthermore, the intervention has not been evaluated on the clinical groups for which it is recommended.

The Dore Programme 

Conditions such as developmental dyslexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome are of considerable clinical importance: they are relatively common neurodevelopmental disorders, which cause misery to children and their parents. Although there are recognised approaches to treatment, more severe forms of disorder are not easy to remediate¹ and many affected children will have life-long problems. According to Wynford Dore, a businessman who started the Dore Achievement Centres, this need not be so.² He maintains that he has not only identified the root cause of many learning difficulties – cerebellar developmental delay – but has also found a way to cure it. Demand for the Dore Programme, a series of exercises done for around 10 min twice a day, escalated after it was featured on UK national prime-time TV early in 2002, and there are now 17 Dore Achievement Centres in Australia. Although most of the promotion of the treatment is based on personal testimonials, these are backed up by research. Dore² pointed to a study showing that treatment led to a nearly fivefold improvement in comprehension, a threefold improvement in reading age, and a 17-fold improvement in writing. The programme costs around $A4000, but as Dore pointed out: ‘Compare it to the price of braces for teeth, *** implants, a family holiday or upgrading your car. Surely it is a price worth paying in the attempt to transform the life of your child?’ (p. 171)

 

Cerebellar basis of neurodevelopmental disorders 

The notion that the cerebellum might be implicated in some children’s learning difficulties is not unreasonable: both postmortem and imaging studies have reported cerebellar abnormalities.³ Furthermore, some studies have reported behavioural deficits involving balance and automatisation of motor skills in a subset of people with dyslexia, consistent with a cerebellar deficit hypothesis. However, it is premature to conclude that abnormal cerebellar development is the cause of dyslexia, rather than an associated feature. Many people with dyslexia do not show any evidence of motor or balance problems.^4,5 Furthermore, the cerebellum is a plastic structure which can be modified by training,⁶ raising the possibility that cerebellar abnormalities might be a consequence of limited experience in hand-writing in those with poor literacy.

Dore, however, claims that ‘Cerebellar Developmental Delay’ is the cause of children’s problems, and that training skills mediated by the cerebellum will lead to improvement in other domains (e.g. reading, social skills). Even Dore’s supporters note that this requires ‘something of a leap of faith’ (p. 52)⁷, given that the cerebellum consists of many autonomous regions. Studies showing that cerebellar function can be modified by training typically focus on improvement in the specifically trained skill. The gaping hole in the rationale for the Dore Programme is a lack of evidence that training on motor-co-ordination can have any influence on higher-level skills mediated by the cerebellum. If training eye–hand co-ordination, motor skill and balance caused generalised cerebellar development, then one should find a low rate of dyslexia and ADHD in children who are good at skateboarding, gymnastics or juggling. Yet several of the celebrity endorsements of the Dore programme come from professional sports people.

 

Efficacy of the Dore Programme: The Published Researched Evidence 

The journal Dyslexia has published two papers describing consecutive phases of a research project conducted at a UK primary school.^7,8 The first paper was followed by nine critical commentaries, with one commentator resigning from the journal’s Editorial Board. The second evoked an even stronger reaction, with five more resignations. To understand the strength of this reaction, one needs to appreciate the mismatch between what the data showed and what was claimed.

Children were selected for inclusion in the study because they had significant risk scores on the Dyslexia Screening Test.⁹ The design of the study was a randomised controlled trial, with one group receiving the Dore Programme and the other receiving no treatment. Although a placebo treatment would have been methodologically tighter, the no-treatment group does control for important confounds, in particular the tendency of children to improve with maturation, and with practice on the tests, and the possible impact of other intervention they may be receiving. Testing of children before and after the treatment phase was done blind to group status. Unfortunately, despite these strengths, the study had some fatal weaknesses, the most serious of which was that the control group was largely ignored when analysing results and drawing conclusions from the study. The only tests given to all children as part of the study were from the Dyslexia Screening Test, a brief assessment intended to screen for children at risk of literacy problems rather than providing a sensitive measure of individual differences. Because its authors embrace a cerebellar theory of dyslexia, measures of bead-threading and balance are included along with more conventional literacy tests in the criteria for identifying risk for dyslexia. As shown in Figure 1, the data on literacy tests did not provide convincing evidence for the efficacy of the Dore Programme; gains were common in the control group as well as in the trained group, presumably reflecting practice effects. Furthermore, despite random assignment, children in the treated group had lower initial scores than those in the control group.¹⁰ The only literacy test showing a significantly larger gain in the treated group was a word reading test (‘one minute reading’), on which the treated group had a lower score to start with and so more room for improvement. At delayed follow-up, after the control group had received 6 months of treatment, their mean score on this subtest fell relative to their pretreatment percentile, failing to replicate the 2003 results.⁸

The authors presented other relevant data from achievement tests given to the whole school as part of regular educational assessments. However, the timing of these tests was not synchronised with the study. This meant that there were no data corresponding to a time when the treatment group had had intervention and the control group had not – because the control group had embarked on treatment at the end of the first phase. Accordingly, the authors presented the data only from the treated group. Although one of the school measures came from a standardised reading test with good psychometric properties, the others were taken from Standard Assessment Tasks (SATS), which are blunt instruments involving some subjective judgement by teachers.¹¹ On these measures there were no control data, and the authors made the dubious assumption that they could assess treatment effects by dividing the gain seen in the year after treatment with gain seen in the year before treatment. It is from these analyses that the remarkable claim comes that there is a 17-fold increase in writing skills after treatment: this is the figure one ends up when comparing mean SATS scores of 2.53 (July 2000), 2.56 (July 2001) and 2.95 (July 2002) using the method described above. Without control data it is impossible to tell whether such changes are meaningful, especially as the SATS were administered by different teachers in different years. In the 2007 paper⁸ the authors present further reading test data, and mention a parental checklist of attention-deficit symptoms which decline after treatment. Again, there are no control data, so we cannot know whether this is age-related change. After all, children’s shoe size will have increased during the study, yet we would not conclude that the intervention made their feet grow. There is nothing here to justify the claims made that the Dore Programme is more effective than state-of-the-art medication for ADHD,² especially in view of the fact that only one child in the study had an ADHD diagnosis.

The data in Figure 1 emphasise another odd feature of this study. The Dore programme is marketed as a cure for dyslexia, a condition that is usually diagnosed by demonstrating a significant mismatch between general ability and literacy skills. One would expect a child with this diagnosis to have marked problems on literacy measures (typically one SD or more below age level, corresponding to 16th percentile). The mean scores of the children in this study were better than this, consistent with the fact that only a minority of them had diagnoses of specific learning difficulties.

The 2003 paper also reported data on the vestibular and postural tests used at Dore Achievement Centres to diagnose cerebellar problems and determine treatment. However, the authors noted that there were no norms for children on these tests. One is left wondering how these measures can be interpreted in a diagnostic setting.

Overall, family doctors and paediatricians need to be aware that the published evidence does not support the claims of a ‘Miracle Cure’: on the contrary, the data from comparisons of treated and control groups lead to considerable scepticism that the intervention improves anything other than those skills that are trained in the exercises.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1440-1754.2007.01225.x

 

 

 

 

I completely agree that all research should be considered. However I am aware that in a paper published by Dorothy Bishop ignored the data which supports the significant improvements the programme does make and presents a very bias view.

Unfortunately  Dorothy Bishop is one of Maggie Snowling's collaborators. As some of us are aware Maggie Snowling is one of the greatest critics of Dore along with her circle of close colleagues (the other 4 board members of the Dyslexia Journal).

After saying this I do believe that the Dore research needs to be more rigorous and until that time the critics of the program will remain, enjoying the challenge of pulling apart this wonderful programme that has successful worked on both adults and children. Isn't it strange that large improvements only begin when the programme begins no matter when the starting age is? Sadly the programme can only be judged on the things that are easily measurable e.g reading spelling tests the DST, in the eyes of the scientific community.

I can also say that I was aware of the "other side of the story" for a year before beginning Dore, I was (ashamedly) put off by their musings and am angry that I let my head and scientific training get in the way of helping my child at an earlier date. Ok my opinions are not based on scientific research papers, which are very often open to lots of different interpretations, but are based on the fact that my child has moved from his own world into ours. He seemed to have so much more than the tests investigating dyslexia could recognise, it's not all about reading and phonectics. 

I could go on but don't want to give any more time and energy on this debate. I have the result I wished for.

Isabella what do think of the paper?

I'm glad you are looking at all available research into DORE (or any other intervention) before making a decision for yourself, & I would strongly encourage you to read as widely as possible before starting. Try putting DORE into PubMed for starters, and read all papers carefully - ask yourself what they have found & how they know that the results were due to the intervention rather than time, extra attention, or another factor.

Being a 'non-drug' treatment does not make an intervention harmless - as those of you who are on the programme will have found out, it takes a lot of hard work, & there are 'opportunity costs' related to spending time every day doing the exercises rather than the usual things that children learn to do while they are growing up, like playing with friends. So aside from the financial costs, it's well worth considering this carefully. I'm dyspraxic, & though I've not done DORE myself, I've been put through rather a lot of similar interventions, none of which worked, and seen friends do DORE. Asking a child to spend a considerable amount of time daily doing unpleasant & boring tasks instead of getting on with the important things of growing up is flat-out wrong if there isn't good evidence to show that it works.

Talking of financial costs, I find Wynford Dore comparing the costs of the programme to '*** implants' disturbing. If DORE works, it's non-trivial & so the comparison is irrelevant & insulting. If there is a cure for dyslexia, it's a good deal more necessary than '*** implants' or foreign holidays, so shouldn't be charged for as luxury goods only accessible to the middle classes.

 I'm glad you are able to have this debate on here. When Prof. Snowling talked to the BBC about DORE instead of trying to win the argument on research, they sent lawyers to her house to tell her to stop talking. Fortunately she won the legal argument, but these things should be argued using facts & research, not lawyers.

 

Lelly88 - I am glad that you understand the need for more methodologically rigorous research. If DORE works, it should be shown to work in quality studies, so that more people can benefit from it & the programme can be improved still further. The poor quality of research makes me angry. It doesn't cost more to run a good trial than a bad, & it's a waste of the time and goodwill of the participants, and it delays getting good treatments out there to everyone who needs it. If DORE hasn't got a good research base, there's no reason for people to choose it over the many, many other treatments out there like homoeopathy, body brushing, sensory integration... you can't do them all & so good evidence is needed so more people can benefit from what works & avoid what doesn't. If you didn't use research & 'scientific training' to decide which intervention to use, how did you choose DORE from the other interventions, which also come with lots of positive anecdotes?

There's a lot of ways to measure things other than reading & spelling. I'd love to put someone through tests of things like field independence (a basic perceptual process highly correlated with cognitive style, & at the far end ASD), one of my particular interests, during DORE. There's stackloads of well-validated tests to measure lots of things beyond reading & spelling that could & should be used in research on DORE. The more research, the more you can show benefits, the more people can be convinced to commit to a programme that works & the better you can 'fine-tune' the programme.

Children generally improve over time, often in fits & starts. If you start measuring, & looking for improvements, during DORE you'll find them. That's why control & comparison groups are so important. If a study doesn't have an adequate control, all it can ever show is that children change over time, not whether that change is down to a particular intervention such as DORE. If you measure children who aren't treated, or who receive any intervention involving lots of time & attention, they will change & some of them will get dramatically better at particular skills suddenly, particularly if they were previously behind, 'cos that's how development works. Happened to me (dyspraxic) without DORE - sudden jumps of improvement every now & then. Happened to lots of dyslexics & dyspraxics without DORE. Happens to typically developing children - see for example the 'language explosion' at ~3 years old - children suddenly start acquiring vocabulary very quickly. That's why well-controlled studies are vital, so you can separate typical development from the effects of an intervention.

 RoseM - as 'staff' I imagine you are familiar with the evidence base for DORE. Please could you be more specific about which data you believe Bishop 'ignored', and how the paper is 'biased'? Methodological critiques are relatively common in journals as part of the process of peer-review, though I agree that this paper finds an unusually large number of holes to pick.

 You may or may not also be interested in a review of methods used in another piece of DORE research (this one published by press release rather than peer-reviewed journal) that I stuck on my blog recently - comments welcome: http://brainduck.livejournal.com/983.html

Thanks,

Duck. 

 (Declaration of interest - I'm an undergrad Psychology student at York, & my dissertation on dyslexia & dyspraxia is being supervised by Prof. Hulme. I hope this can be argued on facts & research rather than smearing me for that. If there's evidence that DORE works, my response would be 'yippeee! this will really help a lot of people I care about & I can do some interesting research on it!'. Sadly, I've not seen sufficient quality research to be convinced yet).

Being a 'non-drug' treatment does not make an intervention harmless - as those of you who are on the programme will have found out, it takes a lot of hard work, & there are 'opportunity costs' related to spending time every day doing the exercises rather than the usual things that children learn to do while they are growing up, like playing with friends. So aside from the financial costs, it's well worth considering this carefully. I'm dyspraxic, & though I've not done DORE myself, I've been put through rather a lot of similar interventions, none of which worked, and seen friends do DORE. Asking a child to spend a considerable amount of time daily doing unpleasant & boring tasks instead of getting on with the important things of growing up is flat-out wrong if there isn't good evidence to show that it works.

Hmmm havnt got time energy or inclination to get in to the whole research argument..however..my child had no friends..social skills wernt his strong point....as for unpleasant tasks im sure if you asked him know he'd rather do Dore all over again than go back to how he was....

They dont have to spend an a considerable amount of time..the longest set of exercises is about 15 mins...hardly gonna maime them for life. Sometimes we all have to do things we dont want to do..unpleasant and boring *stares at ironing pile*..but hey thats life..they need to get over it already..besides its character building..... As I tell my kids when they dont want to do something thats 'boring' of ' not fair'... tough..when your a parent you can make your kids life a misery too!!!!!

Sorry if I seem flipant Duck but the whole research argument is soooooooooo dull and boring now....I wish they would produce some research that would prove it works...I only have my to look at my son to see this.. however thats not scientific enough.....So whats the answer?  what research do they want to see? want to carry out? dont think everyone will ever be satisfied no matter what research is done!!!

hear...hear. My son is the happiest now he's ever been and natural maturity would never have changed him the way he has (his Year 5 teacher said as much). School and sceptical hubby now agree Dore works for him! I'm no expert, and all the research stuff is beyond me, but I see a confident, happy boy who now has friends and is able to learn and retain information. 

Nice plug for the blog

Can I ask you to put your declaration of interest (Or lack of it) in your signature please.

This is the same sort of movement based therepy that is used world wide by OT's Physio's and Visual therapists. It has been known about for 30 odd years. Dore have  made it quantifiable in terms of the assessments and it has been developed to be easy to follow with help at the end of the phone and be quickly accessable. At our recent OT assessment after 1 years wait, the OT was pleased we hadn't waited for them before undertaking motion based theaepy as her work is so much easier now.

He's a nice site on OT you may like to visit (sorry if I have posted it elsewhere on the site)

http://www.otawatertown.com/

and these newsletters are particularly interesting

http://www.otawatertown.com/newsletter.html

I too feel that all I need to look at is the progress my daughter Leila has made during and 2 years after Dore. I read all the research that was available at the time but Dore were the only one's who would give me a diagnosis for Leila's problems the cerebellum development delay.

The only help we could get locally was through learning needs at school which was not enough and was certainly hindered by Leila's global learning difficulties. Another reason why I went to Dore was because I could see in myself what Leila was going through. I also would not fit in to the experts little boxes for any specific LD but have since discovered that I am dyslexic, took me 40 years to find it out though.

As an after thought with all the research that has been done over the years concerning the existance of dyslexia, ADHD. Recently I have read several articals by eminent people who question whether they exist at all and even whether medication is as affective in the long term, original research had influenced the over use of medication to control ADHD, now those same researchers have back tracked and now say it is not affective long term!!!!! 

So what do parents do?  who do they believe? in the end it is up to the individual as to which way they go. In the meantime I have seen the transformation in my daughter and my son has just started his journey with Dore. You can put as many research papers in front of me but in the end it is my own experiance of what Dore can do which has influenced my descisions and for them I am forever grateful. Ellie XXX

I'm glad that people have had positive experiences of their children improving whilst doing DORE exercises. But you only see this happening once you have already started doing the programme. Again, without good research evidence *before* starting the programme, there's no reason to choose DORE over, say, homoeopathy. Surely if you think DORE works, it would be better to have good evidence to show this so that more parents would take it up? Who should parents believe - well, I'd go for peer-reviewed research over personal stories on the Internet any time. Even looking at these forums you can find stories of people for whom DORE hasn't worked. The only way to find out properly whether it is worth taking a chance on before you've done it is research.

Diagnosis is difficult, and it's true that people don't 'fit neatly in boxes' - more like overlapping sets of circles or points on a scale. This is a relatively new field & diagnosis is changing as more work is done - a lot of parents only get a diagnosis when their child is picked up atschool, because 0 or 40 years ago we just didn't know enough. Might change again in the future - on the back of more research.

My experience of doing various tasks which were supposed to 'make me normal' is that 15 mins twice a day is a loooong time to be concentrating on how you are wrong, and to do things you struggle with. If it can be shown to work, it might be worth it - but without doing the research there's no way of telling whether the harms outweight the benefits.

 What research would I like to see - well, something methodologically tighter that the really basic mistakes which keep being repeated across DORE papers. It is simply pointless even to begin a study without a proper control (preferably placebo) group.

 

Lelly88 - would love to see some of the DORE researchers stick their financial ties in, but I'll make myself a signature just for you. I'm interested enough in this area to study it to degree level, & anything that could be shown to work woud have massive benefits for many of my family & myself.

 

'The research argument' isn't boring 'till it's been done. I'm appalled that it hasn't been yet - it wouldn't be more difficult than doing bad research, and would settle the arguent properly so everyone could use what works best, DORE if that's what's been shown to outperform other interventions. 

I only need to see it once I only have one child on the program??!!

"Wait and see" method, yes we had 2 years when the teachers told us "wait and see how he matures". Then his 1st junior teacher tells me "we are extremely worried about Matthew, we need help"

As a dyspraxic child you should now yourself how hard it is to get a child out to play on swings and bikes and play football when they just can't do it, or should I have just thrown my son out crying and told him to get on with it, as my mother-in-law did to my brother-in-law, she knew no better, I do. Can you train a baby to crawl when they have no inclination even though you know it could affect his vision not to?

As a mother who has experience of the education system as it stands today (I won't go there), your wait and see option is absurd, as is arguing about research papers in which different interpretations are highly likely. This may might be high on your priority list at your stage of life, but I'm past that stage.

You also say you have undergone alot of the same sort of therapy- well it obviously worked although you give it no credit at all

As for choosing the peer reviewed option over experiences well that's personal choice but I have followed the arguments between Dore and the phonological researchers since they put me off Dore for a whole year, and know of the bitter fight between the 2 camps. All I can do is tell our story.

If someone had tried homeopathy (for example) and it had proven to 'cure' their child of dyspraxia..then Id try it... Peer-reviewd research  isnt done by parents of children with conditions who live with their child and see the devasting results off their misery because they have a learning disability..As a parent Id take the parental testimonials EVERYTIME!!!! Not only would I not be able to stay on task long enough to actually read the 'scientific' studies/research etc it is always written in 'scientific' terms and is never meant for people such as myself....more for those in the field of research or area of scientific interest.

[ QUOTE :My experience of doing various tasks which were supposed to 'make me normal' is that 15 mins twice a day is a loooong time to be concentrating on how you are wrong, and to do things you struggle with. If it can be shown to work, it might be worth it - but without doing the research there's no way of telling whether the harms outweight the benefits.]

So if something is difficult or uncomfortable then its not worth doing???? you are not concentrating on how you are 'wrong' you are concentrating on how you can be better... the fact that you say phrases like 'make me normal' (whatever normal is!) and concentrating on 'how you are wrong' speaks volumes to me about your own level of self-esteem. As a person who has often felt that she is not 'quite good enough' (and fellow dyspraxic)I can understand these feelings though admitting them is the hardest part!!

The research arguement IS boring if youve heard it a million times before...I hope Wynford gets some research that will silence the critics..no doubt even if its what THEY requested it will be flawed according to some!!!!

As with every 'treatment' the choice is personal...if people never took the risk then many things would never have been discovered or have happened....I mean, what was the guy doing who discovered milk????

Psyduck, Congrats on your interest in dyslexia and dyspraxia. As a parent of a child who suffers with the fallout of these I appreciate any interest on the part of academics in rooting out the causes. My child has gone through 4 years of traditional interventions, every possible phonics, reading, writing, and spelling support has been given to her. She is (and has been) pulled out daily for an hour of one on one work at school and has been receiving additional individual tutoring twice a week for an hour by a Slingerland trained tutor (who happens to also be a retired first grade teacher) throughout that period. In standardized testing she scores in the top 5th percentile on writing conventions yet despite this, until the past few months, she could not write a coherent paragraph. There has consistently been a very disturbing gap between the theory and the practical application of her knowledge. When she was tested (WISC among others) her IQ was in the top 2%, yet her spelling ability was over 2.5 standard deviations below the expected ability for her age. When we heard about Dore it sounded too good to be true. Having a father with a PhD in psychology, who taught educational psychology at university for nearly 40 years, and having a PhD myself, I went to work on the research. It is spotty at best and not very thorough. Rather than discount it out of hand, I put it down to lack of time in existence and lack of numbers to develop quality data. So I took a different tactic, I began to look at neurological research that approached the theoretical basis of Dore. I found an abundance of material that suggests a physiological basis for dyslexia. As I trudged through the research, connections started to click, i.e. a number of studies that show differences in brain density, cerebellum size, gray matter to white matter ratios etc. in dyslexics. The "theoretical" basis of a cerebellular discrepancy began to make sense. We decided to try Dore based on THAT research, not the anecdotes, nor the Dore research. We went into it with an open mind, slightly skeptical of the incredible claims, and without unrealistic goals. We went into it thinking it would be yet another attempt to better our child's life. As to the cost, I absolutely agree that if it works it should be readily available to every child everywhere at no cost. Unfortunately, as you should be aware the cultural construct that we all are a part of does not work that way. I spend more than than the cost of Dore yearly on tutoring for my child. We get none of the conventional treatments for free. They ALL cost money. You noted that you are an undergrad. I assume from that statement, and your enthusiastic challenges, you are fairly young. I also would posit that you do not yet have a child. I apologize beforehand if I am incorrect in these assumptions. But if I am correct you are in a unique position, at an important time in your life, at what I see as a break point in learning disability research. I would challenge you to broaden your horizons beyond the conventional diagnosis, analyses, and accepted treatments. I would challenge you to look beyond the traditional boundaries of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy to fields where groundbreaking technologies are exposing the brain in ways never before imagined. I would not accept at face value, and without challenge, the work of your professors. In university you have one of best opportunities of your life to truly challenge and question the status quo. So do it. Instead of engaging in internet blogging take the time to formulate a large scale, unbiased study with controls of Dore, make it span the course of the treatment and two years, five years and ten years afterward. The people you are working with should be happy to back a study that seeks to disprove a treatment they are so vehemently denying validity to. You have the energy and the enthusiasm, why not you? Sincerely, Scotia P.S. As you formulate your study, carefully examine the ethical implications of the controls. This is a very loaded question in any field (medical, educational or psychological) that impacts the immediate well-being of the participants, and you need to be prepared to defend your decision and position.

Does anyone know why I lose the paragraph formatting when I post?

Dear Duck

I am pleased you are researching dyslexia  -  the need now is at least as great as it was 50 years ago!  My own daughter had wonderful teachers all the way through her school life yet she failed to learn how to read.  It wasn't the teachers’ fault.  Sadly she became so depressed because of her inability to do those things that the rest of us take for granted that she attempted suicide.  That wasn’t teachers fault either.  The parents and teachers who have to deal with these issues every day realise how serious it is and that the present methods being recommended are not working.  What is tragic about this whole situation is that millions are suffering whilst academics argue amongst themselves.

So what would solve this?  My belief is that a thorough system of benchmarking should be introduced for every intervention that purports to help all aspects of learning and behaviour.  Thus phonics programmes, tinted lenses, fish oils, exercise programmes, etc., all have to satisfy thorough benchmarking before data is given to parents and teachers for evaluation.  Why doesn’t the industry get together and commit to coming up with an agreed scheme of benchmarking quickly?

The problem is so serious that the whole dyslexia industry should be pulling together, not fighting with each other.  If you, as a Researcher, would like to come to Kenilworth to look at all the research that underpins everything we do you would be very welcome.  Please feel free to ask Professor Bishop to come with you, she has had an invitation from me some time ago. 

We are very open about all of our research findings, and we are very passionate about the fact that we have a very high success rate in transforming people’s lives and we will not be silenced by critics who have vested interests in other theories.  As many who post on this forum will testify, living with the crisis I had in Susie’s life makes you very passionate and sincere about tackling this problem head on and coming up with a solution that works.  In our view the next generation need not suffer.

Kind regards

Wynford

 PsychDuck I would first like to address your first comment regarding "Dore into PubMed" and what you read there.  Um, I didn't see anything.  If there is something in PubMed regarding specifically the Dore program, would you kindly post the articles, I would be interested in reading them as you give the impression you have found something there.

Second, though Dore is still so very relatively new, and as the  other have so well stated, there is not yet the information out there that we would all like to see, yet the science OF the Dore therapy has been around enough years to have a lot of published solid research you may find of interest.

For example, if you look into the types of therapeutic interventions used to treat individuals that have succomed to later-in-life cerebellar deficits, (whom by a large number develop some of the same issues as what brings participants to Dore) you will find the type of evaluation and rehab they go through is strikingly familiar to our Dore therapy.  Also,since you have a benchmark of pre-deficit condition, the effectiveness of rehab and therapy is measurable and marked.

The most effective researchers look for proof of the other side of the argument as well to have as well-rounded as possible a viewpoint.  

For me, prove to me that it could NOT possibly scientifically be sound and be of benefit, and through that angle, I have found the answers I needed to be comfortable with what Dore is, rather than to look for what a customer would usually look for: show me proof it works.

 

 

Hi All

Having recently been questioned about our research on this forum, we thought this was a great opportunity to put everyone in a clear picture. We hope that the following helps people to understand the parameters we faced in terms of research into the Dore Programme. 

In 2002 Dore took the decision to ask two well respected and acclaimed academics to examine their programme. As a commercial organisation this was a highly risky strategy as, quite rightly, Dore would have no control over the outcomes. The professors agreed to do this study on three conditions. They would design the study themselves without Dore involvement; they would collect the data independently of Dore; they could publish their findings without interference and irrespective of outcomes.

Dore made the unprecedented step of agreeing to all these demands. How many commercial organisations have done this? Pharmaceutical organisations do their own research to support drug therapies. University academics design, perform and publish their own research studies using the millions of pounds of research funding to support their own theories and interventions (we see Professor Snowling has yet another £1million in funding this year). One of the two professors who were heavily involved in running the study using his own academic staff chose to quite legitimately charge only his costs (but not his time) to Dore for doing the study. The other professor did not charge for his involvement.  

The study was conducted as best as was possible to deal with the demands of parents and to deal with the sort of intervention Dore is. One school was chosen in order to control for differences in educational and environmental influences. 

The design was one which has been used extensively in educational research, a blind controlled study. Interestingly they used the same study format as that used by Dyslexia Action in their Spellit study (which incidentally was conducted by their own employees and has never been peer reviewed or published). 

This means that people involved with the study children (teachers, testers) were not aware which children were having treatment. Because of the complexity of the Dore programme (it is not like taking a sugar coated placebo tablet as seen in drug trials) it was impossible to design a good placebo intervention which would not be instantly recognisable as not being the full Dore programme (this would have led to a negative impact of the placebo treatment where the control group knew they were receiving a useless placebo and would lead to negative attitudes which would almost certainly lead to enhanced differences and thus a more positive effect of the Dore group) . Thus like 50% of previous studies into reading interventions (see Troia GA, Reading research quarterly 1999:34(1);28-52) it was decided that the control group would be a holding group getting the sort of support they normally do but no placebo. Thus contrary to some of the suggestions the study did have a control group.  

Parents of children in the control group requested that they receive the Dore programme as part of their involvement in the study. This was agreed. The control group moved onto the Dore programme after 6 months. 

The outcomes of this study were very positive with the Dore treated children making more progress than the control group in several measures of cognitive, literacy and motor performances.  

Another issue has arisen about whether these children were diagnosed dyslexic or not. All children were chosen because they showed significant weaknesses during a dyslexia screening test. In fact it was found that the improvements were the same whether children had been previously diagnosed with dyslexia or not. The professors regarded this as a strength of the study not a weakness. 

Dore was keen to see if these improvements were sustained long term which is rare for such interventions. The professors decided to examine the long term improvements in the whole group once they had completed the Dore programme. Because there was no longer a control group the professors felt that we could compare progress in the Dore group with national measures of expected progress (SATS tests) i.e. how does the Dore group change over time when compared to national progress in reading, writing and maths in children of the same age. Also as the Dore group were being assessed together with the rest of their classmates in SATs and reading age, the professors could examine how the Dore group of children fared when compared to their classmates. This seems an ideal control group to compare the Dore children to as it also controlled for any influences of teaching and environment.

Unfortunately when the study was submitted to publish the very strict peer review process would not accept this approach suggesting that the classmates might be of a different ability. Thus despite the fact that the Dore group were behind their classmates but catching up and the f