The contribution of lexical access speed to RAN and reading
Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › Research
Purpose: The study investigated why and when rapid automatised naming is a predictor of reading. Specifically, we tested the hypotheses that (1) RAN-objects predicts reading because it is a measure of lexical (e.g. phonological) access speed, but (2) that RAN only becomes a predictor of reading development once a certain level of phonological recoding proficiency has been reached. Method: Forty Danish students without reading difficulties were administered tests of reading speed and accuracy, phoneme awareness, RAN-objects, timed confrontation picture naming, and visio-motor reaction time. The students were sampled from two age groups representing two levels of recoding proficiency: Beginning readers in Grade 2-3 and proficient decoders in grade 5-6. We conducted hierarchical regression analyses on reading speed and accuracy to determine whether the relationship between RAN and reading was mediated by lexical and/or general speed of processing. Results: We found that RAN-objects contributed significant variance to reading speed but not accuracy in grade 5-6, but not in grade 2-3. In grade 2-3 reading speed and accuracy were predicted by phoneme awareness. The relationship between RAN and reading speed in the older age group was still strong after controlling for general speed of processing, but controlling for confrontation picture naming speed reduced the contribution of RAN to only marginally significant. Conclusions: We conclude that RAN-objects relationship with reading speed is to a large extent due to the lexical access speed component of the task. However, this relationship only exists once a certain level of decoding proficiency has been reached.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2009 |
| Publication status | Published - 2009 |
| Event | Annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading - Boston, United States Duration: 25 Jul 2009 → 27 Jul 2009 Conference number: 16 |
Conference
| Conference | Annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading |
|---|---|
| Number | 16 |
| Country | United States |
| City | Boston |
| Period | 25/07/2009 → 27/07/2009 |
ID: 14120422