Recent Study Reviewed by NPR Reinforces the Reading Horizons Teaching Method

January 2010
North Salt Lake, Utah – A recent study conducted by the journal Neuron has rediscovered the effectiveness and applicability of the Reading Horizons method for teaching reading.

The Neuron study, as reviewed on NPR, found that when children participate in intensive-reading programs such as the Discover Intensive Phonics program from Reading Horizons, their brain structure is changed. It was found that intensive-reading programs improve the vitality of information pathways as well as increasing the amount of white matter in the brain. White matter influences reading and learning because it is the location of information "highways." By using MRIs on students aged 8-12 who struggled with reading and comparing the MRI scans to students who had typical reading skills, they discovered that struggling readers had a poorer quality of white matter in their brains.

When the students who struggled with reading were placed in intensive-reading programs over the course of a school year, the quality of their brains' white matter improved. The researcher, Marcel Just, was amazed to find that “the amount of improvement in the white matter in an individual was correlated with that individual's improvement in his reading ability.” In the past, researchers believed most learning involved only gray matter in the brain, but this study increasingly pushes them to change the way they view the brain and its processes (NPR, Jon Hamilton, "Reading Practice Can Strengthen Brain 'Highways'").