Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming as Longitudinal Predictors of Reading in Five Alphabetic Orthographies with Varying Degrees of Consistency

Abstract

Although phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are confirmed as early predictors of reading in a large number of orthographies, it is as yet unclear whether the predictive patterns are universal or language specific. This was examined in a longitudinal study across Grades 1 and 2 with 1,120 children acquiring one of five alphabetic orthographies with different degrees of orthographic complexity (English, French, German, Dutch, and Greek). Path analyses revealed that a universal model could not be confirmed. When we specified the best-fitting model separately for each language, RAN was a consistent predictor of reading fluency in all orthographies, whereas the association between PA and reading was complex and mostly interactive. We conclude that RAN taps into a language-universal cognitive mechanism that is involved in reading alphabetic orthographies (independent of complexity), whereas the PA-reading relationship depends on many factors like task characteristics, developmental status, and orthographic complexity. Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) have consistently been found to be closely associated with children's reading development explaining unique variance in children's reading skills above and beyond general factors like age and nonverbal IQ (Araújo, Reis, Petersson, & Faísca, 2015; Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012; Norton & Wolf, 2012). PA refers to the ability to identify and manipulate phonological segments in spoken words, and RAN denotes the ability to name serial displays of letters, digits, pictured objects, or colors as quickly as possible. PA is important as all orthographic systems represent phonological units in one way or another. Children with deficient access to the relevant phonological units will have problems to fully understand the mappings between a certain spoken language and its orthography and training of PA seems to improve reading outcomes (e.g., Suggate, 2016). An important and as yet unresolved issue is whether PA precedes reading acquisition or whether it evolves as a consequence or during the course of learning to read (

(Swiss) GraphoLearn: an app-based tool to support beginning readers

“…But the correlational results of initial RAN for colors suggest that more general automaticity components may be likewise relevant at early stages of word identification fluency. In this line, a recent report found RAN (average score of digits and colors) to be a consistent predictor of reading fluency from grade 1 to end of grade 2 across five alphabetic orthographies of varying complexity, including German (Landerl et al, 2019). Of note, gains in pseudoword reading in our study were not significantly correlated with T1 RAN skills, in line with the idea that pseudoword decoding relies on different processes than word identification.…”

“…Finally, as mentioned in the introduction, orthographic transparency plays an important role in these differences. For instance, skills like RAN may relate to more universal mechanisms while the relative importance of phonological trainings may vary more with orthographic complexity (Landerl et al, 2019). Reading accuracy and pseudoword decoding, on the other hand, develop faster in transparent orthographies (Caravolas, 2018).…”

Cortical tracking of speech in noise accounts for reading strategies in children

“…100 It is a consistent predictor of reading fluency in various alphabetic 540 orthographies independently of their complexity. 104 RAN performance even predicts reading 541 performance at 2 years interval, 105 similarly well for reading performance assessed with tasks 542 tagging lexical and sublexical routes. It is thought that RAN and reading performances correlate 543 because both involve serial processing and oral production, 103 two processes that are common 544 to both reading routes.…”

Rapid automatized naming in a developmental perspective between ages 4 and 10

“…Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is a process that in previous research, it has been found to correlate with reading ability both concurrently (e.g., Georgiou, Parrila, & Papadopoulos, ; Moll et al, ; Vaessen & Blomert, ) and over time (e.g., Georgiou, Papadopoulos, & Kaizer, ; Landerl et al, ; Lervåg & Hulme, ). However, findings are not consistent, and it is still not clear why and to what extent RAN relates to reading.…”