How phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming specifically contribute to the development of reading strategies ?

Abstract

Phonological Awareness (PA) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) have been shown as reliable predictors of variability in learning to read, as well as causal factors in reading disabilities. On the one hand, numerous studies insist on crucial impact of PA on reading through the way of the sublexical route. On the other hand, results are few and variable regarding the impact of RAN (i.e. the ability to name as quickly as possible a number of highly familiar visual stimuli arranged in a matrix) on reading strategies. Some authors support that RAN reflects the establishment of direct word recognition and the lexical route of reading (Manis, Franklin, Seidenberg & Doi, 1999 ; Manis, Doi, & Bhadha, 2000 ; Wolf, Bowers & Biddle, 2000 ; Stainthorp, Powell, & Stuart, 2013). However, their studies lack consistency in the assessment of the reading routes and RAN. To better understand common underlying processes between PA/RAN and reading, the present study aims to investigate the nature of the impact of PA and RAN respectively on the sublexical and the lexical routes in reading by means of fine psycholinguistic assessments. Experimental tasks measuring PA, RAN and both routes of reading were administered to sixty-one second graders without pathological score in vocabulary or nonverbal intelligence and without language impairment. Multiple regression analyses were conducted. The results showed that RAN predicts the development of direct access to the stored phonological representation of printed words (lexical route) more than the decoding procedure (sublexical route). The reverse pattern was observed for PA. This supports distinct contributions of PA and RAN to reading