Can second-grade struggling readers from low socioeconomic and language-minority background benefit from GraphoGame, a computer-assisted reading intervention?

International assessments such as PISA and PIRLS reveal a performance gap in reading comprehension among students with disadvantaged socioeconomic status (SES) and with an immigrant background. This is partly explained by weaknesses in decoding, underscoring the importance of explicit reading instruction for these populations (Capin et al., 2024).
In the present study we examined the hypothesis that GraphoGame, a computer game focused on letter identification and word decoding, improved basic reading skills with struggling second-grade readers attending a low-SES school, and who were mostly language minority pupils receiving French language instruction.
To this end, we compared, the gains obtained with GraphoGame to the gains obtained with a control activity in various reading tasks (knowledge of letters, grapheme-phoneme conversions, pseudowords reading, GraphoGame words reading, text reading rate). A crossover design was used, with two groups of 10 pupils, two conditions (GraphoGame and a control activity) and two intervention periods of 5 weeks each. Furthermore, during both intervention periods, the pupils participated in sessions of reading remediation for 30 minutes a week. Frequentist and Bayesian statistical analyses indicated that the participants obtained better gains after the GraphoGame intervention than after the control activity on the different reading tasks.
The study suggested that GraphoGame, when used in the school context, can improve the decoding and reading skills of struggling second-grade readers attending low-SES schools and mostly from language minorities who had made little progress in learning to read in their first year of schooling.