How does rapid automatized naming influence orthographic knowledge?

Dalia Martinez; George K Georgiou; Tomohiro Inoue; Alberto Falcón; Rauno Parrila

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105064

How does rapid automatized naming influence orthographic knowledge?

J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Apr:204:105064. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105064. Epub 2021 Jan 12.

Authors

Dalia Martinez¹, George K Georgiou², Tomohiro Inoue³, Alberto Falcón⁴, Rauno Parrila⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada.
² Department of Educational Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada. Electronic address: georgiou@ualberta.ca.
³ Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
⁴ Department of Human Communication, University of Morelos, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
⁵ Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia.

PMID: 33445106
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105064

Abstract

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is a strong predictor of reading fluency across languages, and some researchers have attributed this to the contribution of RAN to the development of orthographic knowledge, which is predictive of reading fluency. However, to date, it remains unclear whether RAN (alphanumeric and nonalphanumeric) predicts orthographic knowledge (OK) and what skills may mediate their relation. To examine the RAN-OK relations, we assessed 114 Grade 3 Spanish-speaking Mexican children (58 girls; M_age = 7.9 years, SD = 0.3) on RAN (objects and digits), orthographic knowledge (lexical and sublexical; accuracy and response time), speed of processing, multi-element processing, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency. Path analyses showed first that, OK (both lexical and sublexical) partly mediated the effects of RAN on reading fluency. Second, multiple mediation analyses showed an indirect effect of both RAN tasks on lexical and sublexical OK through phonological awareness. In view of Ehri's amalgamation hypothesis and Share's self-teaching hypothesis, our findings suggest that RAN may reflect, in part, the speed with which the phonological representations of letters are accessed and retrieved, which subsequently influences how quickly orthographic representations can be formed and accessed.

Keywords: Multi-element processing; Orthographic knowledge (OK); Phonemic awareness; Rapid automatized naming (RAN); Reading fluency; Spanish.

MeSH terms

Child
Female
Humans
Language Development*
Male
Phonetics
Reaction Time*
Reading*