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Revision as of 20:04, 26 October 2006 by UberScienceNerd (talk | contribs) (rv apparent copyright violation)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Fast ForWord is a set of instructional software. It was developed by Scientific Learning Corporation, and is intended to improve students' language and reading skills through games. The inventors claim that the games are effective because they enhance the brain's ability to discriminate small temporal intervals and detect fine temporal relationships. Scientific Learning presents on its website many studies comparing students before and after the use of the product, and many of these studies suggest that substantial gains may occur. For example, in a study on Australian speech therapy students, the average improvement was from the 14th to the 32nd percentile. However, this study (along with others cited on the Scientific Learning website) compared students before and after treatment, and lacked randomization. Thus, they cannot indicate whether the gains are genuine effects of treatment with Fast ForWord, or merely gains resulting from maturation or by other instruction the students may be undergoing, or possibly practice effects on the assessment tests themselves. The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy recently reviewed Fast ForWord, focusing only on "gold-standard" randomized controlled trials, and based on these studies they concluded that Fast ForWord is "ineffective" as a treatment of reading disorders.
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