According to Bowers and Wolf (1993), rapid automatized naming (RAN) is related to reading because of its contribution to orthographic processing. However, the nature of the RAN-orthographic processing relationship remains unclear. Thus, the purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to examine the relationship of RAN with different measures of orthographic processing (lexical and sub-lexical; accuracy and response time) and (b) to examine what processing skills may account for the relationship between RAN and orthographic processing. One hundred university students (70 females; mean age = 21.42 years, SD = 2.59) were tested on measures of RAN, orthographic processing, discrete naming, phonological recoding, and speed of processing. The results indicated that RAN correlates only with lexical orthographic processing response time and that phonological recoding speed explains the RAN-orthographic processing relationship. These findings suggest that RAN contributes to how quickly letter sequences are mapped in order to form the orthographic representations which are important for whole word recognition
