FAQs

BrightStar Reader  is a non-verbal, internet-based application that uses unique visual stimulation in conjunction with a simple interactive hand-eye coordination game-like task and an eye tracking exercise to ameliorate deficits in reading difficulties and disabilities, such as those associated with dyslexia. 

In order to make BrightStar Reader™ available to as wide an audience as possible, we have developed it as an Internet-based application.  BrightStar Reader™ cannot be used without an Internet connection.

BrightStar Reader™ should be used on a computer screen no smaller than 15 inches wide (not diagonal).  In order to ensure best results, we avoided creating a version of BrightStar Reader™ for devices with smaller screens.

No, you don’t have to be diagnosed with a disability to use the program. BrightStar Reader can assist those with reading difficulties or challenges such as those experienced by slow or poor readers. Poor readers experience literacy shortcomings, despite having normal IQs and academic performance.  In fact, even people who read at normal skill levels can benefit from using BrightStar Reader.

We are working on coordinating resources with agencies offering financial aid.  Until such time as formal sources of financing are in place, we will give careful consideration to scholarship requests on a case-by-case basis.  For more information, please contact us at: scholarships@brightstar-learning.com

You should use BrightStar Reader wherever you find it most convenient and where it is most practical to use BrightStar Reader as recommended for best results.  For more information on recommended conditions, please click here.

BrightStar Reader has been successfully tested to ameliorate reading difficulties (e.g. slow readers) and reading disabilities (e.g. dyslexia). Reading problems often co-occur with other learning conditions and/or disabilities, such as, ADHD, ADD, dyspraxia, working memory, or mild-speech disorders.  At the moment, we welcome anyone whose core challenge is reading to enjoy the benefits of BrightStar Reader.

No. It’s important that you stick to using the program twice a week. Sought-after results have been observed in thousands of clients using this optimal schedule and frequency.

For best results with BrightStar Reader, take care to follow the following recommendations:

• Sit at a distance away from the screen equal to the width of the screen. If the screen is 15 inches wide, sit 15 inches away from the screen.
• Your eyes should be focused on the center of the screen.
• The hand using the mouse should be visible at all times even when the road and car are not on screen.
• The room should be darkened—the darker, the better.
• Room temperature should be 20-24°C/ 68-75°F.
• Eliminate background noise.
• Sit comfortably, please do not cross your legs.

The BrightStar Reader program uses a unique form of visual stimulation to ‘prime’ and retrain certain parts of the brain responsible for involuntary motor control of eye movements. The end result is a faster, more pleasant experience in reading and learning.

From time to time, BrightStar Reader displays an image of a winding road in the center of the screen. The user navigates a yellow car along a center line on this road with his/her computer mouse. This way the user easily exercises coordinating his/her eyes and hand movements repetitively. The user also tracks passively with his eyes a serial display of geometrical symbols at the center of the screen that briefly flicker and change of shape, size and color.  Unlike many computer games, BrightStar Reader causes little or no excitement or arousal. The non-arousing effect of BrightStar Reader is purposeful: by limiting cognitive arousal, the user remains relaxed and unstressed during the BrightStar Reader sessions.

The session has a three-fold purpose:

* The nature of the exercise helps the user maintain his/her focus on the screen during the entire length of the session.

* The user’s sustained focus on the center of the screen enables him/her to obtain the maximum benefit of the visual stimulation to his/her peripheral vision.

* The repetitive hand-eye movements required for maneuvering the car involve the parts of the brain responsible for timing movement (cerebellum) as well as the user’s eye-tracking skills.

BrightStar Reader prompts the brain to make beneficial adaptive changes in its neural networks which are involved in reading skills. BrightStar Reader does this by remapping and coordinating the way the brain allocates visual attention and uses visual stimuli. The user will then be able to allocate his brain resources in a more efficient manner.  As a result, the user will achieve greater reading fluency and comprehension, making for more effective and faster learning.

The moving lines (‘sprites’) you see on the screen are an active part of the program. You should focus on the picture and not the moving lines entering the screen from the edges.  Some of the lines will flash every once in a while – this is all normal and BrightStar Reader is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. The number of sprites, where they appear, their speed and frequency of the flashing are all factors tailored to the individual user.

You will continue to see benefits after you conclude the BrightStar Reader program because your brain is still responding to the cumulative effects of the program sessions. Your brain continues to adapt and retrain its neural circuits such that now it is better fitted to apply new learning strategies.

Now that your brain is more efficient in allocating attention to reading tasks, you will feel less pressured and more relaxed. As a result, you’ll find it easier to read and learn and such tasks will take much less time.

While there are no long term studies regarding how long these effects last, we believe that the manner in which BrightStar Reader achieves its benefits will result in a long-term or even permanent benefit.

Use of BrightStar Reader can lead to improvements with reading difficulties or disabilities such as dyslexia, regardless of their severity. BrightStar Reader targets the root causes of reading challenges at the early sensory-motor level, regardless of the severity of the symptoms experienced.

The BrightStar Reader program passively steers your visual attention to smooth eye pursuit movements by serially displaying geometrical symbols in a number of lines at the center of the screen display. These geometrical symbols flicker fast, change in shape, size and color, thus stimulating magnocellular visual flow to efficiently reach the cerebellum and contribute to the correct execution of eye movements necessary for mastering reading.  From time to time, you’ll be asked to either press    or abstain from pressing   on the space key bar when you see certain signs. This clicking exercise measures your reaction time and ability to abort movement in the fly as a response to pattern recognition.

For more information on using the optical eye-tracking please read here.

System Requirements

• Internet Access Required
• Microsoft Windows® XP SP2 or newer OS
• Firefox 3.6 and higher is recommended
• Google Chrome 8 and higher – Chrome 10 and higher is recommended
• Internet Explorer 7 and higher – IE9 is recommended
• Adobe Flash Player version 10.3 and higher is required
• 1.83 GHz or faster processor — recommend 2.66GHz Dual Core or faster
• 1 GB RAM — recommended 2GB or more
• Monitor Size – 17’’ and higher, 19’’ and higher is recommended
• Screen resolution 1024 x 768 and higher is recommended
• Wired mouse is required, stylus pen with tablet is recommended.
• Wireless mouse, trackball or touchpad mouse cannot be used

Our theory is that upon successful completion of the BrightStar Reader program, there will be a momentum of the cognitive/perceptual-motor (thinking, movement perception) processes you use in learning. This momentum will continue to motivate the improvement of your academic/professional performance and help you to maintain those gains. Please note, however, that when you reach your appropriate age level in reading performance it might still be possible to derive benefit from further BrightStar Reader learning sessions.

We do not diagnose dyslexia. There is still no agreement on the definition of dyslexia. That may be because dyslexia so often comes along with other learning difficulties like ADHD, but it’s also because we’re now aware of the many sub-types of dyslexia (visual/perceptual/cerebellar/phonological). The bottom line is that finding a “pure dyslexic” by means of current evaluation tests is still elusive and science still can’t point to any clinical findings agreeable to all that could categorically serve to identify dyslexics

At the moment, despite compelling research there is a lack of comprehensive diagnostic methods and consensus on a standard definition for dyslexia. What we do know is that from a scientific standpoint, BrightStar Reader can not only improve poor (deficient) literacy skills (reading fluency, lexical retrieval, and spelling) but also spatial visual attention in those who are of normal intelligence.

BrightStar Reader is an interactive motor task that requires the repetition of easy-to-perform manual skills. The aim is to capture your focused attention, with a minimal need for the brain to monitor or prioritize other, external visual information. As a result, the periphery of moving, flashing icons can work, undisturbed, to excite the magnocells (large cells) that help your eyes function.

We chose a vertical road to encourage the user to navigate the car along a horizontal axis. In this way, “driving” the car causes repetitive right/left hand-eye movements that mimic the way your eyes and hand move while reading and writing.

So far, BrightStar Reader technology has been tested in dyslexics and in individuals with visual ADD who reported poor reading and writing performance. Additional data is still needed to determine if other learning disabilities can benefit from BrightStar Reader.

Yes! In children, for example, spelling and reading difficulties do not occur in a vacuum – both difficulties should be considered behaviors that represent a much broader underlying (early) developmental motor-perceptual (movement visual perception) deficit, be it spatial (movement in relation to other objects/environment) and/or temporal (the timing of movement). More to the point, despite the fact that many dyslexics are phonologically disabled—they find it difficult to assign sounds to letters or words – they are also challenged by perceptual audio-visual discrimination deficits (spatial/temporal). Despite the many facets that comprise their difficulties, some dyslexic adults, if they work at it, will in time succeed in compensating for some of the classical behavioral signs of dyslexia.

BrightStar Reader was conceived and developed as a sensory-motor visual perceptual technology that ameliorates or triggers compensatory mechanisms for diminishing reading difficulties, reading disabilities, and writing and spelling deficits. BrightStar Reader targets “basic language skill deficiencies” in the population at large.

BrightStar Reader has a wider potential range of operation that exists independent of the educational psychology that packages and labels the above deficits into neat categories of learning disabilities.  Today we know that there are overlaps between ADHD and dyspraxia with dyslexia at a rate of 50% to 60%. BrightStar Reader targets the deficiencies in language-based skills that accompany ADHD and/or dyspraxia, but does not target the impulsive behavior resulting from ADHD or the intrinsic lack of motor coordination and balance experienced by dyspraxics.

BrightStar Reader aims to ameliorate visual perception deficits that stem from poor involuntary eye movement control. This lack of involuntary eye movement control makes for poor recognition of fast-moving objects and their timing properties. These visual sensory-motor perceptual deficits are at the neurological core of an inability to read words as they “fly” by us on the page and are often cited as the most common finding within the dyslexic population. For this reason, BrightStar Reader’s logical target audience is dyslexia and dyslexics. However, these same visual perceptual deficits also occur in other learning-disabled populations.

Since BrightStar Reader promotes the flow of sensory-motor and perceptual information that generate rapid plastic (adaptive) processes in the brain, and given the fact that the magnocellular and attentional systems reach their full functional maturity only at the age of 10-12, we believe that children at the age of puberty will benefit fastest from BrightStar Reader program.

Our theory is that BrightStar Reader affects the functioning of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). It is known and accepted by the scientific community that the ANS balance is affected by the need to address different types of visual information. For instance, you will feel relaxed by passively gazing at a beautiful landscape and taking in the scene as a whole by using your spatial attention. On the other hand, you will feel stress or tension, while discriminating (in detail) the colors you see when using your focused attention. The ANS is also known to be affected by mental tasks that require varying levels of voluntary effort. One of the main goals of BrightStar Reader is to remove or ameliorate these stressors from visual perception bringing about an overall heightened state of relaxation.

BrightStar Reader is different from other remedial software programs. You won’t see any score display or other overt signs of your progress within the application itself.

However, every 4 sessions you will be presented with a suite of cognitive tests   that will provide a way of measuring the progress of your cognitive abilities that are related to reading. These tests measure:

* Sensory versus perceptual stimuli interference effect—your reaction time and accuracy when naming colors and reading words in color (for instance “black” is easier to read than “black”). This is called the Stroop effect test.

* Word recognition – your reading speed. WordChains Word Recognition metric system helps us understand how fast you identify words. Word recognition is an important enabling phase for attaining smooth and effortless reading fluency.

The BrightStar Reader Program also provides you with performance feedback in regards to the actual progress made while interactively playing the game-like tasks:

* Reader Performance Sensory-Motor Progress—how fluid and accurate are your movements (e.g. too slow or too fast or almost null) in relation to your navigation task (e.g. inside/outside the road, how close you succeeded maintaining the car to the center dividing line of the road).

* Reader Performance Visual Attention Spatial Lateralization Allocation Preference — Left Visual Field (LVF) versus Right Visual Field (RVF). Where in space do you naturally engage most your eye-hand coordination movements?

Over time you will notice that you can read with greater ease as well as focus for a longer period of time.

Of course you can also take didactic tests offered by the professional of your choice. Testing may be offered at school or you may need to set up a private appointment.  These tests offer an assessment of your progress in reading fluency and comprehension. Your teacher at school can also follow up on your progress and let you know if and in what way you’re making gains in your literacy skills. This can be done both during and after you complete the BrightStar Reader program.

Those who have used BrightStar Reader have reported positive changes in their attitudes towards reading and writing at about the 5^th or 6^th session. At this point, these users also found they have better focus when learning new subjects. Additional and significant reading and writing gains are often reported 2-3 weeks after the conclusion of the 8-session BrightStar Reader program.

An early version of the BrightStar Reader technology was tested by Nottingham University in the United Kingdom. See Liddle, E., Jackson, G., and Jackson, S., An Evaluation of a visual Biofeedback Intervention in Dyslexic Adults. Dyslexia 11: 61-77 (2005).

The following presentations offer background material on the history of the BrightStar program:

a) Bondorowicz, S., Kullok, J. R., Kullok S., A combination of computerized photic stimuli technology and special needs teachings: A new and efficient method to ameliorate deficits associated with dyslexia. In: Proceedings Sixth BDA International Conference, 27-30 March, (2004) – University of Warwick, UK.

b) Liddle, E., Jackson, G., and Jackson, S., An Evaluation of a visual Biofeedback Intervention in Dyslexic Adults. Dyslexia 11: 61-77 (2005).

If it has been 5-20 days since the missed session and you have already completed 3 or more consecutive sessions, you can go ahead and resume the sessions.

Yes.

If you have completed 6 or more consecutive sessions, you can resume from where you left off. Resume the sessions as soon as you can and continue until you’ve completed all 8 sessions.

In that case, just start the program over again.

You can continue with the program, but in order to receive the maximum benefit from BrightStar Reader, try to stick to the session protocol. Complying with the recommended schedule and frequency of use is important to ensure best results with  BrightStar Reader.

Not to worry—this won’t affect your final results. There’s no need to make up the missed session.

No problem—this won’t affect your final results and there’s no need to make up the missed session.

Just continue with the next session, session 4 as long as less than 21 days passed since session 3 was finished. Keep in mind that complying with our recommended schedule and frequency of use is important to ensure best results with BrightStar Reader™.

No. If you completed only one or two consecutive sessions and then discontinued the program and over 21 days passed, you’ll have to start over again from the beginning with session 1.

If you completed 8-9 minutes or more of the session, you’re good—you’ve received sufficient benefits from the present session. Don’t start over again; just do your next session as scheduled.

If your session was interrupted at any point before the completion of the first 8-9 minutes, you should EXIT the current session, wait at least thirty minutes and START over again as soon as possible within the same day, in order not to deviate from the BrightStar Reader™ program schedule.

Yes. You have 60 days after purchasing the BrightStar Reader to request money back. You will receive your money back in full after 14 working days of our having received in writing your request for reimbursement.

No. If you had to discontinue the program for a force-majeure reason, please contact us and we will offer you the opportunity to re-engage your Reader Program within 6 months from your request. You have 14 working days from your last session to approach us in writing with your request.

If you take the Reader program and comply in full with the program’s protocol as indicated in the Reader Protocol section and nevertheless, 4 weeks after finalizing the program you have not experienced any improvements in your reading skills, we will refund your money in full.

Email our customer support service with your request and we will take care of your request promptly. We will refund your money within 4 weeks after having received your written request for money-back and after having verified you are eligible for it.

The refund money will be credited to the same Credit Card or PayPal account you paid with. If the original account you have used to make your purchase has been closed, we won’t be able to process your refund.

You can claim your refund starting 4 weeks after completion of the program. Deadline for claiming your refund is 2 months after having completed the program.

We will refund your money within 4 weeks after having received your written request for money-back and after having verified you are eligible for it.

BrightStar will contact the first 30 users who complete the Reader program and write a testimonial on our Facebook page. Users will be asked if they would like a full refund, a partial refund, or if they would rather forego a refund in recognition of the valuable reading benefits their child achieved from the Reader program. BrightStar also requests that you “like” their FaceBook page, but this is not a requirement for the refund. Program must be completed and testimonial must be posted by July 30, 2012 to be eligible for refund