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Adults learned the meanings of rare words (e.g., gloaming) and then made meaning judgments on pairs of words. The 1st word was a trained rare word, an untrained rare word, or an untrained familiar word. Event-related potentials distinguished trained rare words from both untrained rare and familiar words, first at 140 ms and again at 400-600 ms after onset of the 1st word. These results may point to an episodic memory effect. The 2nd word produced an N400 that distinguished trained and familiar word pairs that were related in meaning from unrelated word pairs. Skilled comprehenders learned more words than less skilled comprehenders and showed a stronger episodic memory effect at 400-600 ms on the 1st word and a stronger N400 effect on the 2nd word. These results suggest that superior word learning among skilled comprehenders may arise from a stronger episodic trace that includes orthographic and meaning information and illustrate, how an episodic theory of word identification can explain reading skill.

This study considers the differential predictive value of rapid naming tests for various aspects of later reading, where the differential is between nondisabled and poor readers. Two large-N longitudinal samples of students who have been evaluated from third through eighth grades are studied: (a) a randomly accessed, normally distributed group including students with varying degrees of reading ability (N = 154), and (b) a group of poor readers whose single-word reading in third grade is at or below the population 10th percentile (N = 64). Outcomes in fifth and eighth grade were measured in both groups. Single-word reading in both grades was strongly predicted from third-grade rapid naming only within the poor readers, even when IQ, socioeconomic status, and third-grade single-word reading were statistically controlled. Although rapid naming had predictive value within the large, normally distributed group, its predictive power was entirely absent in the average-reading nondisabled students who were between the 10th and 90th percentiles (n = 122). The fact that rapid naming has predictive power only for poor readers but not for average readers is interpreted as suggesting that impaired readers are qualitatively different from the normal-reading population and are not simply the "tail" of a normal distribution of reading ability. It also seems that it is the automaticity of retrieval, not the knowledge of names itself (as in confrontational naming tasks), that gives the predictive power in rapid naming. These data are considered in light of the one- and two-factor theories of the underlying processes involved in reading disability or dyslexia.

Two words that varied in their relationship were presented sequentially to Chinese readers who made meaning and pronunciation decisions. In the meaning task, they decided whether the words had the same meaning. In the pronunciation task, they decided whether the words had the same pronunciation. In both tasks, the word pairs represented 1 of 4 relationships: graphically similar, homophonic, semantically related, or unrelated. Event related potentials (ERP) recordings made from the onset of the 2nd word suggested a temporal unfolding of graphic, phonological, and semantic effects. Specifically, graphically-related pairs produced a smaller P200 in the pronunciation task and a smaller N400 in the meaning task. Homophones produced reduced N400 component with bilateral sources in the meaning task.