Tutoring Young Children at Risk of Developing Reading Difficulties: Effects of an Early Tutoring Intervention on Literacy Skills and Executive Functions

This study investigated the effects of an early literacy intervention onmeasures of literacy and executive functions in the first year of Danishprimary school. The program targeted six- to seven-year-old childrenat risk of developing reading difficulties and made use of tutoringand multi-sensory methods. We conducted a randomized controlledtrial in eight primary schools with a total sample of 72 students andmeasured the effects on three standardized measures of literacy:decoding, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness. We alsoexamined the effects on five standardized measures related to execu-tive functions: consistency of attention, inattention, impulse control,verbal memory, and working memory. The tutors wrote short diarynotes for each tutoring session, which we used to examine imple-mentation fidelity. The primary analysis indicates that the treatmentgroup improved more than the control group on all but one of theoutcome measures; however, the differences are not statistically sig-nificant. The exception to the improvements is verbal memory, forwhich the estimate is negative, small, and insignificant. Exploratoryanalyses indicate positive and significant effects on broader constructsof attention and literacy, and null effects on memory. The examina-tion of implementation fidelity suggests that deviations from the pro-gram manual and contextual factors related to the level andprogression of letter knowledge skills weakened the impact. Ourresults suggest testing the hypothesis that literacy tutoring improvesexecutive functions in larger samples would be promising.IntroductionNot being able to read proficiently has the potential to hinder learning in school andcan have lasting impacts into adulthood (Gustafsson, 2016; Stanovich, 1986; Sulkunen& Malin, 2018). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) estimates that approximately 20% of Danish 15-year-olds do not have theliteracy skills necessary to be classified as proficient readers—a level which comparesto the OECD average of 26% (OECD, 2023). These students likely encounter reading© 2025 the author(s). Published with license by taylor & francis Group, llc.CONTACT Julie k. Seerup jkp@vive.dk Herluf trolles Gade 11, 1052 copenhagen k, denmark.Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10824669.2025.2468701.https://doi.org/10.1080/10824669.2025.2468701this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)or with their consent.