Word Reading Fluency as a Serial Naming Task

Word list reading fluency is theoretically expected to depend on single word reading speed. Yet the correlation between the two diminishes with increasing fluency, while fluency remains strongly correlated to serial digit naming. We hypothesized that multi-element sequence processing is an important component of fluency. We used confirmatory factor analyses with serial and discrete naming tasks with matched items, including digits, dice, objects, number words, and words, performed by about 100 Greek children in each of Grades 1, 3, and 5. Separable serial and discrete factors emerged across grades, consistent with distinct skill dimensions. Loadings were greater for serial than discrete, suggesting that discrete processing does not fully determine serial processing. Average serial performance differed more than discrete between grades, consistent with improvement beyond single-item speed. Serial word reading aligned increasingly with the serial factor at higher grades. Thus, word reading fluency is gradually dominated by skill in simultaneously processing multiple successive items through different stages (termed “cascading”), beyond automatization of individual words.     

What Discrete and Serial Rapid Automatized Naming Can Reveal About Reading

Serial rapid automized naming (RAN) has been often found to correlate more strongly with reading than discrete RAN. This study aimed to demonstrate that the strength of the RAN–reading fluency relationship is dependent on the format of both RAN and the reading task if the reading task consists of sight words. Seventy-one first-grade, 74 second-grade, and 127 fourth-grade children were administered discrete and serial measures of RAN and word reading. The results showed that in second- and fourth-grade readers similar formats of RAN and reading were more strongly related than dissimilar formats. However, in first-grade readers serial RAN was more strongly related to reading than discrete RAN, irrespective of the format of the reading measure. Implications of these results are discussed for the interpretation of RAN and the tracking of the use of sight word reading.     

Cognitive Correlates of the Covariance in Reading and Arithmetic Fluency: Importance of Serial Retrieval Fluency

This study examines the core predictors of the covariance in reading and arithmetic fluency and the domain-general cognitive skills that explain the core predictors and covariance. Seven-year-old Finnish children (N = 200) were assessed on rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness, letter knowledge, verbal counting, number writing, number comparison, memory skills, and processing and articulation speed in the spring of Grade 1 and on reading and arithmetic fluency in the fall of Grade 2. RAN and verbal counting were strongly associated, and a constructed latent factor, serial retrieval fluency (SRF), was the strongest unique predictor of the shared variance. Other unique predictors were phonological awareness, number comparison, and processing speed. Findings highlight the importance of SRF in clarifying the relation between reading and arithmetic fluency.     

Rapid serial naming and reading ability: the role of lexical access

Rapid serial naming tasks are frequently used to explain variance in reading skill. However, the construct being measured by rapid naming is yet undetermined. The Phonological Processing theory suggests that rapid naming relates to reading because of similar demands of access to long-term stored phonological representations of visual stimuli. Some researchers have argued that isolated or discrete-trial naming is a more precise measure of lexical access than serial naming, thus it is likely that any shared variance between these two formats can be attributed to similar lexical access demands. The present study examined whether there remained any variance in reading ability that could be uniquely explained by the rapid naming task while controlling for isolated naming. Structural equation modeling was used to examine these relations within the context of the phonological processing model. Results indicated that serial naming uniquely predicted reading, and the relation was stronger with isolated naming controlled for, suggesting that isolated naming functioned as a suppressor variable in the relation of serial naming with reading.     

Deconstructing rapid automatized naming: Component processes and the prediction of reading difficulties

This study explores 1) the components of rapid automatized naming (RAN) by first analyzing the factorial associations between RAN tasks and various nonword decoding and processing speed measures and secondly, by exploring which of these process latent variables are uniquely associated with literacy in 65 below-average readers and spellers. In preliminary factor analyses, all speeded naming tasks loaded together (Factor 1: Rapid Naming); All tasks involving speeded alphanumeric naming loaded together (Factor 2: Alphanumeric Naming); Alphanumeric RAN tasks also loaded with nonsense word decoding (Factor 3: Decoding). The Alphanumeric Naming factor predicted 2% of unique variance in Literacy. Our results thus provide two new findings: 1) only very modest variation in Literacy is explained by aspects of RAN not primarily associated with either generic naming speed or decoding ability; 2) variation in other verbal forced choice response speed and response inhibition tasks are linked to reading through common variance in speeded naming tasks also shared by alphanumeric RAN tasks. Implications of these findings for theories of reading and individual differences are explored.     

What's in a Name Depends on the Type of Name: The Relationships Between Semantic and Phonological Access,Reading Fluency,and Reading Comprehension

The present study investigated the relationships between lexical access, reading fluency, and comprehension. Two components of speed of lexical access were studied: phonological and semantic. Previous studies have mainly investigated these components of lexical access separately. The present study examined both components in naming tasks—with isolated letters (phonological) and pictures (semantic). Seventy-five Grade 5 students were administered measures of letter and picture naming speed, word and nonword reading fluency, and reading comprehension, together with control measures of vocabulary. The results showed that letter naming was a unique predictor of word reading fluency, whereas picture naming was not. Conversely, picture naming speed contributed unique variance to reading comprehension, whereas letter naming did not. The results indicate that phonological and semantic lexical access speed are separable components that are important for different reading subskills.     

Phonemic Awareness Is a More Important Predictor of Orthographic Processing Than Rapid Serial Naming: Evidence From Russian

We studied the relationship between rapid serial naming (RSN) and orthographic processing in Russian, an asymmetrically transparent orthography. Ninety-six students (M age = 13.73) completed tests of word and pseudoword reading fluency, spelling, orthographic choice, phonological choice, phoneme awareness (PA), and RSN. PA was a better predictor of orthographic skills and pseudoword reading accuracy than RSN, which accounted for more variance in word and pseudoword reading fluency. Controlling for pseudoword reading fluency washed out RSN’s contribution to word reading fluency. These results extend previous findings questioning the role of RSN as an index of orthographic processing skills and support the idea that RSN taps into automaticity/efficiency of processing print-sound mappings.     

Rapid Naming Components and Their Relationship With Phonological Awareness,Orthographic Knowledge,Speed of Processing,and Different Reading Outcomes

This study examines (a) how rapid automatized naming (RAN) speed components—articulation time and pause time—predict reading accuracy and reading fluency in Grades 2 and 3, and (b) how RAN components are related to measures of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and speed of processing. Forty-eight children were administered RAN tasks in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results indicated that pause time was highly correlated with both reading accuracy and reading fluency measures and shared more of its predictive variance with orthographic knowledge than with phonological awareness or speed of processing. In contrast, articulation time was only weakly correlated with the reading measures and was rather independent from any processing skill at any point of measurement.     

RAN Components and Reading Development From Grade 3 to Grade 5: What Underlies Their Relationship?

We examined (a) how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components—articulation time and pause time—predict reading accuracy and reading fluency in Grades 4 and 5, and (b) what cognitive-processing skills (phonological processing, orthographic processing, or speed of processing) mediate the RAN–reading relationship. Sixty children were followed from Grade 3 to Grade 5 and were administered RAN (Letters and Digits), phonological processing, lexical and sublexical orthographic processing, speed of processing, reading accuracy, and fluency tasks. Pause time was highly correlated with reading fluency and shared more of its predictive variance with lexical orthographic processing and speed of processing than with phonological processing. Articulation time also predicted reading fluency, and its contribution was mostly independent from other cognitive-processing skills. Implications for the relationship between RAN and reading are discussed.     

Developmental Changes in the Relations Between RAN,Phonological Awareness,and Reading in Spanish Children

We examined the developmental relations of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) with reading in a cross-sectional study with 874 Spanish children from Grades 2 to 6. Our main prediction was that the RAN–reading relationship would decrease due to a gradual change in reading strategy, from serial decoding to sight word reading. Therefore, in contrast to most previous studies, we used discrete reading tasks. Serial RAN tasks for objects, colors, digits, and letters were included. First, we examined whether the RAN tasks loaded on the same constructs across time. An alphanumeric and a nonalphanumeric factor were identified, which were invariant over time. In subsequent multigroup structural equation models we found that the PA–reading relationship was low but slightly increased in the higher grades. As predicted, the RAN–reading relationship decreased for words, whereas the relationship remained stable for pseudowords.     

Component processes in reading: shared and unique variance in serial and isolated naming speed

Reading ability is comprised of several component processes. In particular, the connection between the visual and verbal systems has been demonstrated to play an important role in the reading process. The present study provides a review of the existing literature on the visual verbal connection as measured by two tasks, rapid serial naming and isolated (or discrete-trial) naming speed, as they relate to reading ability. For each identified study, a secondary data analysis was conducted using the provided correlations between serial naming, isolated naming, and reading. The same analysis was repeated for average population-level correlations among these constructs using meta-analytic weighting techniques. Results suggested that isolated naming acts as a suppressor variable in the relation of serial naming with reading, indicating that there exists at least one cognitive component of the serial naming task that is predictive of reading but is not shared with isolated naming speed. The effect has several implications for understanding the underlying cognitive components reading ability, which are discussed.     

Rapid naming speed and Chinese character recognition

We examined the relationship between rapid naming speed (RAN) and Chinese character recognition accuracy and fluency. Sixty-three grade 2 and 54 grade 4 Taiwanese children were administered four RAN tasks (colors, digits, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, characters), and two character recognition tasks. RAN tasks accounted for more reading variance in grade 4 than in grade 2, and graphological RAN tasks accounted for more reading variance than RAN Colors. After controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, phonological sensitivity, short-term memory, and orthographic processing, RAN tasks were significant predictors of character recognition fluency in grade 2, and of both accuracy and fluency in grade 4.     

Rapid automatized naming,word-level reading,and oral reading fluency in first-grade Korean readers at risk for reading difficulties

This study was designed to investigate potential reading differences between low-achieving and typically achieving first-grade Korean-speaking children by (1) comparing their speed of lexical access on alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric tests of rapid automatized naming and (2) comparing relationships between the two groups’ performance on alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric tasks with their performance on component measures of reading. Twenty-seven low-achieving readers and 34 typically achieving readers participated in this study. The low-achieving readers performed significantly more slowly than their typically achieving reading peers on the four measures of rapid naming. The response rates for both alphanumeric naming tasks (digits and letters) showed strong negative correlations with oral reading fluency, while their response rates for the non-alphanumeric naming tasks (Color and Object naming) showed relatively weak relationships with reading measures for both groups. In regression equations, Letter naming tasks were uniquely associated with both word recognition and oral reading fluency. The utility of using alphanumeric naming tasks as indicators for identifying Korean Hangul readers who are at risk for reading disabilities is discussed.     

Different RAN components relate to reading at different points in time

The present 10-year longitudinal study examined how rapid automatized naming (RAN) components—articulation time and pause time—relate to reading fluency. Seventy-five Greek-speaking children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 10 and were assessed five times (in Grades 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10) on RAN (digits and objects) and reading fluency (word reading efficiency, phonemic decoding efficiency, and text reading fluency). The results indicated first that a substantial amount of variance in reading fluency was accounted for by what articulation time and pause time shared. In addition, the unique contribution of pause time to reading fluency decreased across time and the unique contribution of articulation time increased across time. Viewed in conjunction with the developmental changes in the RAN components, our findings suggest that the RAN tasks are processed and executed in different ways across time.     

Differential relationships between RAN performance,behaviour ratings,and executive function measures: Searching for a double dissociation

Abstract. In this study, we investigated the relationships between rapid naming of letters, digits and colours, and reading ability and executive function. We gave fifty-six grade three and four children rapid automatised naming tasks using letters and digits as stimuli, executive function measures including the Stroop task, a working memory task and the Trailmaking B task. The latter three tasks were used as measures of executive function. We also administered tests of verbal ability, reading and a behaviour checklist. The rapid naming of letters and digits was significantly correlated with reading, but not with executive function or behaviour ratings. The rapid naming of colours (from the Stroop task) was significantly correlated with the executive function tasks and the behaviour ratings but not with reading. We discuss the implications of this double dissociation for further studies of RAN.     

Specificity and overlap in skills underpinning reading and arithmetical fluency

The aim of this study was to examine unique and common causes of problems in reading and arithmetic fluency. 13- to 14-year-old students were placed into one of five groups: reading disabled (RD, n = 16), arithmetic disabled (AD, n = 34), reading and arithmetic disabled (RAD, n = 17), reading, arithmetic, and listening comprehension disabled (TRIPLE, n = 9), and typically developing students (NON-LD, n = 40). Multivariate analyses of covariance and variance component analyses showed that reading problems are characterised by difficulties with phonological processing and with rapid automatic naming. Problems with executive functioning and with digit span were typical for students with arithmetical fluency difficulties. RAD students had problems with phonological processing, rapid naming, executive functioning, and digit span. Impairments in number fact fluency, digit span, loudness perception, speeded sound manipulation, and coding, which all share a fluency component were common to problems with reading and arithmetical fluency.     

Correlates of orthographic learning in third‐grade children's silent reading

This study examined word identification, phonological recoding efficiency, familiar word reading efficiency, orthographic choice for familiar words and serial naming speed as potential correlates of orthographic learning following silent reading in third‐grade children. Children silently read a series of short stories, each containing six repetitions of a different target non‐word. They subsequently read target non‐words faster than homophones and preferred target non‐words to homophones in an orthographic choice task, indicating that they had formed functional orthographic representations of the target non‐words through phonologically recoding them during silent story reading. Target non‐word orthographic choice was correlated with all measures bar non‐symbol naming speed. The association between phonological recoding efficiency and orthographic learning lends support to the hypothesis that self‐teaching occurs through phonological recoding even in silent reading. Our findings were not generally consistent with the view that serial naming speed assesses orthographic learning aptitude.     

Serial rapid naming skills in children with reading disabilities

This study compared the performance of children with reading disability (RD) and normal reading achievement (NRA) on tasks of serial rapid naming, verbal fluency, letter-based word retrieval, and articulatory speed. The groups, composed of children at two discrete age levels, one younger and one older, were matched for age, gender, and neighborhood school. Analyses of the on-line measurement of the children’s serial rapid naming indicated that the children with RD had significantly larger reaction times and production durations than their NRA peers despite similar levels of accuracy. They also performed significantly worse on the categorical verbal fluency task, the letter-based word retrieval task, and the test of articulatory speed. The findings suggest that both access and post-access processes, such as oral-motor inefficiency that extends the duration of word production, may be implicated in the slower serial rapid naming that has typified many samples of children with RD. This work was supported in part by Basil O’Connor Research Grant 5-340 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, a Scholarly and Creative Activity Award and sabbatical leave from California State University, Long Beach and grant #DCO 1904-01 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the NIH to the first author.     

Contributions of phonological processing skills to reading skills in Arabic speaking children

This cross-sectional study investigated contributions of phonological awareness (Elision and blending), rapid naming (object, color, letter, and digit), and phonological memory (nonword repetition and Digit Span) to basic decoding and fluency skills in Arabic. Participants were 237 Arabic speaking children from Grades K-3. Dependent measures included word decoding, oral passage reading fluency, nonword reading fluency, and retell fluency. Within-grade analyses indicated that phonological awareness accounted for more variance than rapid naming regardless of the nature of the outcome measure and grade. Rapid naming’s capacity to predict variance, while less than that of phonological awareness, tended to rise steadily and was highest in Grade 3. Phonological memory, as measured by this study’s tasks, showed almost no relationship to reading performance. The findings are discussed with respect to changing the requirements of Arabic reading in Grades K-3 and suggestions are made for future research.     

Component processes of early reading, spelling, and narrative writing skills in Turkish: a longitudinal study

The study examined: (a) the role of phonological, grammatical, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in reading and spelling development; and (b) the component processes of early narrative writing skills. Fifty-seven Turkish-speaking children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2. RAN was the most powerful longitudinal predictor of reading speed and its effect was evident even when previous reading skills were taken into account. Broadly, the phonological and grammatical skills made reliable contributions to spelling performance but their effects were completely mediated by previous spelling skills. Different aspects of the narrative writing skills were related to different processing skills. While handwriting speed predicted writing fluency, spelling accuracy predicted spelling error rate. Vocabulary and working memory were the only reliable longitudinal predictors of the quality of composition content. The overall model, however, failed to explain any reliable variance in the structural quality of the compositions.