Pure and Short-Term Phonics-Training Improves Reading and Print-Specific ERP in English: A Case Study of a Japanese Middle School Girl

Although phonics is the most frequently used approach in treating students with reading difficulties, its effects have not been fully clarified at either a behavioral or neurophysiological level. The present case study administered pure and short-term (i.e., 10 minutes per day for five weeks) phonics-training to a 13-year-old Japanese girl with severe difficulty in learning English. As a result, a drastic improvement in reading accuracy was associated with the enhancement of print-specific N170 in event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the trained words. The present finding indicates that phonics training can, by itself, remediate English reading and affect its neurophysiological bases.