Individual differences in RAN and reading: A response timing analysis

Thirty 8–11-year-old children were administered tests of rapid naming (RAN letters and digits) and reading-related skills. Consistent with the hypothesis that RAN predicts reading because it assesses the ability to establish arbitrary mappings between visual symbols and verbal labels, RAN accounted for independent variance in exception word reading when phonological skills were controlled. Response timing analysis of different components of RAN digits and letters revealed that neither average item duration nor average pause duration were unique predictors of reading skill. However, the number of pauses on digit naming predicted unique variance in exception word reading. Moreover, better readers paused more strategically than poorer readers (e.g. more often at the ends of lines). We suggest that rapid automatised naming may in part reflect differences in strategic control that are a result of differences in reading practice and experience

Spelling–stress regularity effects are intact in developmental dyslexia

The current experiment investigated conflicting predictions regarding the effects of spelling–stress regularity on the lexical decision performance of skilled adult readers and adults with developmental dyslexia. In both reading groups, lexical decision responses were significantly faster and significantly more accurate when the orthographic structure of a word ending was a reliable as opposed to an unreliable predictor of lexical stress assignment. Furthermore, the magnitude of this spelling–stress regularity effect was found to be equivalent across reading groups. These findings are consistent with intact phoneme-level regularity effects also observed in dyslexia. The paper discusses how findings of intact spelling–sound regularity effects at both prosodic and phonemic levels, as well as other similar results, can be reconciled with the obvious difficulties that people with dyslexia experience in other domains of phonological processing

On the association between serial naming speed for letters and digits and word-reading skill: Towards a developmental account

The current study examined several alternative explanations of the association between serial naming speed within fourth-grade children by determining the extent to which the association between word reading and naming speed for letters and numbers is mediated by global processing speed, alphanumeric symbol processing efficiency and phonological processing ability. Children were given multiple measures of key constructs, i.e. word-level reading, serial naming of both alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric items, phonological processing ability, articulation rate and global processing speed. The robust association between alphanumeric naming speed and reading within fourth-grade children was largely mediated by phonological processing ability. Markedly different patterns of results were observed for naming speed for letters and digits and naming speed for colours and pictures in children of this age. Relative to the latter, alphanumeric naming speed better assesses an underlying phonological processing ability that is common to word-reading ability. We argue that item identification processes contribute little to individual differences in alphanumeric naming speed within relatively proficient readers and that the extent to which alphanumeric naming speed primarily reflects phonological processing is likely to vary with the level of overlearning of letters and numbers and their names