Reading skills are fundamental for a child’s success in school and throughout life. The availability of written documents in our society has become so diffused that it is taken for granted; practically an invisible technology (Norman, 1999; Di Tore, 2015). In other words, we have become so accustomed to using writing words as a form of communication that it is as if it were a natural ability. Nevertheless, reading is far from an innate capacity and does not form part of  an individual’s biological development. It needs to be learnt (Stella, 2004) and the development and the acquisition of this competence constitutes one of the key competences for lifelong learning (EC, 2014) in European educational systems. The results published in the “Programme for International Student Assessment” (PISA) (OECD, 2003) have shown that in Europe, on average, 20% of fifteen-year-old pupils lacks the necessary reading skills. Similarly, in Italy, a study carried out by INVALSI (2012), using the same PISA tests, demonstrated that 19.5% of the pupils of  the same age range do not reach the minimum level required. This data is worrying when considering that pupils at school-leaving age have not yet developed the necessary basic skills for the world of work, thus leading to the natural consequence of a high incidence in unemployment among this generation and the impossibility to further their learning. Meanwhile, the periodical screening and monitoring of the development in reading skills was introduced in Italy with the Law n.170 of 8 October 2010. These factors led to a collaboration between 6 primary schools in the region of Campania and the University of Salerno with the aim of conducting a study on the development of 163 third-year pupils’ reading skills. In accordance to the data previously delineated, the results showed that 25% of the sample obtained a score which is significantly lower than the National Average (below the 5^th percentile) in the standardised Reading MT Test (Cottini, 2008). Notwithstanding the differences in age ranges and the tests used, this data can be considered as an anticipation of the situation in less than 10 years. This premise led to extend the research to the potential of gaming to counteract the phenomenon. This study outlines the project phases and the development of a battery of educational videogames aimed at promoting the development of the prerequisites required to master reading skills, independent of the language spoken or learnt. Thus, the freeware being developed can be of interest to any language context.  

Design of the Educational Videogame

The automatization of  matching the grapheme and the phoneme (Tressoldi, 2001) while reading, which is the basis for the development of reading skills, is the result of numerous specialised cognitive mechanisms developed by man over time. From this perspective, reading is an example of cognitive vicarious use (Berthoz, 2014; Rivoltella, 2014), or a simplex adaptive strategy (Sibilio, 2014). As suggested in literature one of the indirect strategies to promote the development of reading skills is that of focusing on these prerequisites (Cornoldi, 2003; Facoetti, 2006). A plethora of studies demonstrated that specific forms of interaction on which certain types of videogames are based, allow the development of reading skills indirectly (Dye, 2009; Green, 2007, Franceschini, 2013). So far, the research team has created two edugames aimed at improving the development of:

• visuo-spatial attention;
• reaction times;
• the ability to identify visual targets and trace their movement.

The effective educational potential of these edugames is currently being tested. A more detailed description of these prototypes and of their forms of interaction will be available online in the near future at the following address:  www.labh.it/actionvideogames.

Berthoz, A. (2011). La semplessità, Codice. Berthoz, A. (2015). La vicarianza. Il nostro cervello creatore di mondi, Codice. Cornoldi, C. (2013). Dislessia e altri DSA a scuola. Strategie efficaci per gli insegnanti. Centro Studi Erickson. Cottini, L. (2008). Per una didattica speciale di qualità: dalla conoscenza del deficit all'intervento inclusivo, Morlacchi. Di Tore, S.; Sibilio, M. (2015). L'invisibile tecnologia della parola: design e sviluppo di un software per dislessici. pp.33-41. In TD TECNOLOGIE DIDATTICHE - ISSN:1970-061X vol. 23(1) Dye, M.W.G., Green, C.S., & Bavelier, D. (2009). The development of attention skills in action video game players. Neuropsychologia,47, 1780–1789. EACEA, (2011), Insegnare a leggere in Europa: contesti, politiche e pratiche , Agenzia esecutiva per l'istruzione, gli audiovisivi e la cultura. Retrived From: http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/Eurydice/documents/thematic_reports/130IT.pdf European Communities (2004). Key Competences for Lifelong Learning: European reference framework. Retrieved from: https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/youth-in-action-keycomp-en.pdf. Facoetti, A., Zorzi, M., Cestnick, L., Lorusso, M. L., Molteni, M., Paganoni, P., ... & Mascetti, G. G. (2006). The relationship between visuo-spatial attention and nonword reading in developmental dyslexia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 23(6), 841-855. Franceschini, S., Gori, S., Ruffino, M., Viola, S., Molteni, M., & Facoetti, A. (2013). Action video games make dyslexic children read better. Current Biology, 23(6), 462-466. Green, C.S.,&Bavelier, D. (2007). Action video game experience alters the spatial resolution of attention. Psychological Science, 18,88–94. Invalsi (2012), Rapporto Nazionale Ocse Pisa 2012, Retrieved from: http://www.invalsi.it/invalsi/ri/pisa2012/rappnaz/Rapporto_NAZIONALE_OCSE_PISA2012.pdf Norman, D. A. (1999). The invisible computer: why good products can fail, the personal computer is so complex, and information appliances are the solution: The MIT press. OECD (2003), Programme for International Student Assessment, Retrieved from: http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmentpisa/33690591.pdf Rivoltella, P. C. (2014). La previsione. Neuroscienze, apprendimento, didattica, La Scuola. Sibilio, M. (2014). La didattica semplessa, Liguori. Stella, G. (2004). La dislessia, Il mulino. Tressoldi, P. E., Stella, G., & Faggella, M. (2001). The development of reading speed in Italians with dyslexia a longitudinal study. Journal of learning disabilities, 34(5), 414-417.