Rapid serial naming: Developmental trajectory and relationship with the Bangor Dyslexia Test in Spanish students

This study aimed to analyse the developmental trajectory of the accuracy and speed of naming among dyslexics and developing readers from 1st to 6th grade of primary education. It examined how familiarity with the stimulus influences the performance of different naming tasks in both groups and evaluated the link between naming speed and the Bangor Dyslexia Test. With a descriptive and correlational design, eight naming tasks and the Bangor Dyslexia Test (Miles, 1982; Outón & Suárez, 2010) were administered to a sample of 198 dyslexics and 245 developing readers. The results showed that the dyslexics were slower and more inaccurate in all the naming tasks, compared with the developing readers of the same age. Greater difficulty was observed with the less familiar stimuli. It became evident that naming performance improved with age among both groups of subjects. Finally, a greater number of significant and positive correlations were found between the naming tasks and the Bangor Dyslexia Test in the dyslexic group; the strongest relationship was obtained by naming lettersS

The effect of oral hygiene education of care-aides combined with periodontal debridement on the gingival health of institutionalized elders

Objective: This randomized controlled trial tested the effectiveness of educational programs for care-aides combined with periodontal debridement of institutionalized elders on the gingival health of the elders. Methods: the UBC Gingival Bleeding Index (UBC GBl) was calculated following an oral examination by a dental hygienist of 113 elderly residents of 14 long-term care facilities. Care-aides in one randomly selected group of seven facilities received instruction and continuous guidance on oral hygiene care from a nurse-supporter in each facility, while the careaides in the other group received similar instruction from a dental hygienist visiting each facility on one occasion without involving a nurse-supporter. The two groups were then randomly assigned to a "treatment" group who received full periodontal debridement, or a "non-treatment" group who did not receive periodontal debridement. Results: No significant difference in the mean UBC GBl of the four groups at baseline and 3-months was found, but gingival bleeding following periodontal debridement in the nurse-supported/treatment group (UBC GBI=23) was significantly lower than in the nurse-supported/non-treatment group (UBC GBI=58, t=3.488, p=0.002), the Care-aide/treatment group (UBC GBI-47, t= 2.274, p=0.031) or the Care-aide/non-treatment group (UBC GBI=76, t=6.547, p=0.000). Conclusions: The gingival health of institutionalized elders can benefit from an oral hygiene nurse-supported educational program offered to care-aides combined with periodontal debridement.Dentistry, Faculty ofGraduat

Development of serial processing in reading and rapid naming

Serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) is more strongly related to reading fluency than naming of isolated words, suggesting that the implementation of serial processing may underlie the RAN-reading relationship. In this study, 107 Greek children from Grade 2 and 107 from Grade 6 were tested with discrete and serial naming of digits, objects, and words in 50-item arrays. The correlation between discrete and serial word reading was very high in Grade 2 but only moderate in Grade 6. In confirmatory factor analysis, a reading-naming latent structure fit the Grade 2 data best; in contrast, a serial-discrete structure fit the Grade 6 data. Thus, the superficial longitudinal stability of RAN-reading correlations belies vastly different patterns of interrelations, indicative of changes in the developing cognitive processes underlying both naming and reading. Word fluency tasks in Grade 2 are apparently accomplished largely as a series of isolated individual word naming trials even though multiple individual letters in each word may be processed in parallel. In contrast, specifically serial procedures are applied in Grade 6, presumably via simultaneous processing of multiple individual words at successive levels. It is proposed that this feat requires endogenous control of cognitive cascades. © 2013 Elsevier Inc

RAN Backward: A Test of the Visual Scanning Hypothesis

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is strongly correlated with reading fluency. A substantial part of this correlation is ascribed to the serial nature of the task. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the left-to-right and downward scanning direction of reading and RAN may partially underlie their relationship. 107 Grade 6 Greek children were assessed on RAN digits and objects, a reversed-direction version of RAN digits, and word- and passage-reading fluency. The correlations of regular RAN with reading were not larger than those of RAN backward, ruling out visual scanning as an explanation of the relation between RAN and reading. © 2013 Copyright 2013 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

The contribution of executive functions to naming digits, objects, and words

Although it is established that reading fluency is more strongly related to serial naming of symbols than to naming of isolated items (serial superiority effect), the reason for the difference remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of executive functions in explaining the serial superiority effect. One hundred seven Grade 6 Greek children were assessed on serial and discrete naming (digits, objects, and words), executive (inhibition, shifting, and updating) and non-executive tasks (simple choice reaction), and on a serial Rapid Alternating Stimuli task. Reading fluency correlated more strongly with serial naming than with discrete naming, consistent with the serial superiority effect. In hierarchical regression analyses, executive measures failed to account for variance shared between serial naming and reading fluency. In confirmatory factor analyses, including a discrete and a serial factor for the naming tasks, variance in the executive tasks not shared with simple choice reaction was not associated with the serial factor. Thus, the executive tasks failed to account for the serial superiority effect. The high correlation between the simple choice factor and the discrete naming factor suggests that method variance partially underlies the observed relationship between executive function tasks and word reading. We argue that the distinction between serial and discrete dimensions indicates that internally regulated cognitive control is crucial for the serial superiority in naming symbols and words. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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. © 2018 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading

From individual word recognition to word list and text reading fluency

This study aimed to examine (a) the developing interrelations between the efficiency of reading individually presented words (i.e., isolated word recognition speed) and the efficiency of reading multiword sequences (i.e., word list and text reading fluency); (b) whether serial digit naming, indexing the ability to process multi-item sequences, accounts for variance in word list and text reading fluency beyond isolated word recognition speed; and (c) if these patterns of relations/effects differ between two alphabetic languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek). In total, 710 Greek- and English-speaking children from Grades 1, 3, and 5 completed a serial digit naming task and a set of reading tasks, including unconnected words presented individually, unconnected words presented in lists, and sentences forming a meaningful passage. Our results showed that the relation between isolated word recognition speed and both word list and text reading fluency gradually decreased across grades, irrespective of contextual processing requirements. Moreover, serial digit naming uniquely predicted both word-list and text reading fluency in Grades 3 and 5, beyond isolated word recognition speed. The same pattern of results was observed across languages. These findings challenge the notion that individual word recognition and reading fluency differ only in text-level processing requirements. Instead, an additional component of processing multi-item sequences appears to emerge by Grade 3, after a basic level of both accuracy and speed in word recognition has been achieved, offering a potential mechanism underlying the transition from dealing with words one at a time to efficient processing of word sequences. © 2019 American Psychological Association

Tracking the serial advantage in the naming rate of multiple over isolated stimulus displays

The serial advantage, defined as the gain in naming rate in the serial over the discrete task of the same content, was examined between grades and types of content in English and Greek. 720 English- and Greek-speaking children from Grades 1, 3, and 5 were tested in rapid naming and reading tasks of different content, including digits, objects, dice, number words, and words. Each type of content was presented in two presentation formats: multiple stimulus displays (i.e., serial naming) and isolated stimulus displays (i.e., discrete naming). Serial tasks yielded faster naming rates—irrespective of task content—in both languages. However, content-specific characteristics influenced the trajectory of the serial advantage between grades. Improvement in the serial advantage between grades was found to be greatest for word reading, which started off similar to object naming in Grade 1, but ended up similar to digit or dice naming by Grade 5. In addition, growth in serial advantage was found to be associated with growth in discrete naming rate only in grade level analysis. For individuals, greater serial advantage was found to rely on processing skills specific to serial naming rather than on differences in the rate of naming isolated items. Our findings suggest that group level findings may not generalize to individuals, and although practice and familiarity with the content on the naming/reading task may impact the development of serial advantage, isolated item identification processes contribute little to individual differences in the gain in serial naming rates. © 2019, Springer Nature B.V