ChatGPT-Based Reading Instruction Improves Comprehension for Arabic-Speaking Children with Dyslexia — United Arab Emirates

A quasi-experimental study by Mahmoud Gharaibeh (Department of Special Education, Al Ain University, Abu Dhabi) and Abdullah Basulayyim (Department of Special Education, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah), published in Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology (Vol. 20, No. 8, Nov 2025, pp. 2858-2871), tested whether ChatGPT-based reading instruction could improve comprehension for Arabic-speaking children with dyslexia. The study recruited 60 children aged 8-11, diagnosed with dyslexia, from public and private schools across the UAE, and divided them into control and experimental groups.

The experimental group received ChatGPT-based reading instruction during regular school hours, while the control group followed standard instruction. Both groups sat pre- and post-tests of equivalent difficulty but different content, using the Sentence Reading Comprehension Test and the Reading Maze Test. The published results report a statistically significant improvement in reading-comprehension scores for the experimental group relative to the control group, with post-test results showing increased sentence-comprehension accuracy and better contextual understanding of reading material. The authors conclude that ChatGPT-based exercises show promise as a supplementary tool in remedial reading programmes for children with dyslexia.

The peer-reviewed abstract does not report exact percentage gains, effect sizes, or a p-value, and it does not describe how experimental and control groups were allocated (i.e., whether allocation was randomised) or how many children were in each arm, nor any explicit data-protection or informed-consent protocol for using a commercial generative-AI tool with children. These are genuine gaps that limit how strongly the results can be generalised, even though the reported direction and significance of the effect are consistent with other dyslexia-focused ChatGPT studies in Arabic.

Read the full analysis: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40396946