Effectiveness of Attention Training based on Fletcher’s Program, Delacato’s Neuropsychological Treatment, and Computerized Cognitive Rehabilitation on Executive Functions in Children with Special Learning Disability

Introduction: We aimed to compare and determine the effectiveness of three methods of attention training based on Fletcher's program, Delacato's neuropsychological treatment, and computerized cognitive rehabilitation, on executive functions of children with special learning disability.

Methods: This was a four-group pretest-posttest design with a control group (three experimental groups and one control group) quasi-experimental study. The population included all students aged 7 to 12 years with learning disorders referred to the Learning Disorders Treatment Centers in Tehran during 2019. First, 40 students were selected from these centers by convenience sampling. This number was then randomly divided into four groups of attention training based on Fletcher's program, Delacato's neuropsychological treatment, computerized cognitive rehabilitation, and one group as a control group (N=10). Three methods of attention training based on Fletcher's program (12 sessions of 45 minutes), Delacato's neuropsychological method (12 sessions of 50 minutes), computerized cognitive rehabilitation (10 sessions of 30 minutes individually), were separately trained to the three experimental groups. Gerard and colleagues’ (2000) Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Functions (parent form) was used to collect data.

Results: The results of the study revealed that the three methods were effective on executive functions in children with a special learning disability (P<0.05). Based on the results of the post hoc test, the scores of both attention training groups based on Fletcher's program and computerized cognitive rehabilitation method were significantly different from the control group (P<0.0001). This indicates that both interventions had an effect on increasing the executive function of children with special learning disability, but there was no significant difference between the three experimental groups (P>0.05).

Conclusion: Given that computers are available in almost all schools, such programs can be considered as part of the curriculum for students with learning disabilities. Accordingly, through Fletcher’s attention-based training method and computerized cognitive rehabilitation improved the performance of this group and prevented the creation of a defective process of failure in these students by improving their executive functions.