MIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION Pushing the Speed of Assistive Technologies for Reading Matthew H. Schneps 1,2,3 , Chen Chen 3,4 , Marc Pomplun 1 , Jiahui Wang 5 , Anne D. Crosby 3 , and Kevin Kent 3 ABSTRACT— People who are practiced in using text-to-speech can drive listening speeds to surprisingly high limits. Here, we investigate the extent to which people who are otherwise untrained, with and without dyslexia, can increase their reading speed when forcibly accelerated visual or auditory presentations are used in isolation or in tandem. Te experiment examined the reading speed and compre- hension of 43 college students using three methods enabled by software on a handheld device: forcibly accelerated visual augmentation, auditory text-to-speech, and a combination of the two. We found that both typical and impaired readers attained the highest reading speed using the combined method, controlling for comprehension. Importantly, those with dyslexia using the combined methods reached the equivalent reading speed of typical readers using paper, visual, or auditory methods, with no loss in comprehension. Findings here suggest that in future evolutions—using tech- nologies available today—parallel neurological pathways for language processing can be exploited to optimize reading for those impaired. Reading is a struggle for many people, whether due to impairment in auditory-phonological or visual- orthographic processing (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2005). Te focus of dyslexia research has been on reading acqui- sition and decoding, as this is critically important in those who are first learning to read. It is generally thought that 1 Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston 2 Scheller Teacher Education Program, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology 3 Mind, Brain, and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education 4 Science Education Department, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 5 School of Teaching and Learning, University of Florida Gainesville Address correspondence to Matthew H. Schneps, Computer Sci- ence Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 William T. Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125; e-mail: matthew.sch neps@umb.edu poor experience with reading leads to a spiraling decline in children with dyslexia, and that with early intervention and practice the negative effects of this decline can be reduced. However, as such programs of support begin to take hold, it is expected that the numbers of students with dyslexia entering higher education will continue to rise. And yet little is known about how to support those with dyslexia who continue to have difficulties with reading in higher education, where the volume of material needing to be read is substantial, posing concurrent demands for both speed and comprehension far exceeding those in the primary grades, addressed via therapy. Here, we investigate whether current neurological frameworks for dyslexia can provide insights into the design of assistive technologies that would enable advanced students with reading impairment to read at levels of speed and comprehension that are comparable to their peers who are unimpaired, who read using normal visual methods on paper. Teories of Reading Impairment Impairments in phonological processing are predominantly attributed to be the core mechanism of dyslexia (Olson, Forsberg, Wise, & Rack, 1994; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowl- ing, & Scanlon, 2004). Phonological processing deficits are believed to result in difficulties in phonemic or letter-sound decoding (Blau, van Atteveldt, Ekkebus, Goebel, & Blomert, 2009), which in turn affect word identification performance and subsequent reading comprehension (Blachman, 2000; Snowling, 2000; Stanovich, 1991; Vellutino, Scanlon, Small, & Tanzman, 1991; Vellutino, Scanlon, & Tanzman, 1994). Convergent reports have shown that people with dyslexia perform below average in phonological and auditory sen- sitivity tasks (Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Fletcher et al., 1994; Katz, 1986; Tomson & Goswami, 2010). Moreover, poor performance in such tasks at a young age can effectively predict future reading difficulties (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999). Increasing numbers of studies suggest that this phono- logical processing deficit is a secondary impairment of more fundamental auditory parameters. Among these are rapid © 2018 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1