Three experiments are reported that focus on the grammatical and associative relationship between a single word context and a to-be-named target in the SerboCroatian language. Unlike studies using the English language, word class need not be violated in order to obtain grammatical incongruency: all word pairs, therefore, can be semantically plausible. Experiment 1 contrasted naming with lexical...

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is strongly related to literacy gains in developing readers, reading disabilities, and reading ability in children and adults. Because successful RAN performance depends on the close coordination of a number of abilities, it is unclear what specific skills drive this RAN-reading relationship. The current study used concurrent recordings of young adult participants...

The aim of this preliminary study was to examine the feasibility of a rapid automatic naming (RAN) task for young Spanish–English speaking dual language learners (DLLs) and to examine the relationship between children’s performance on RAN and other standardized language and literacy assessments. A total of 275 Spanish–English speaking children in kindergarten and first grade attempted a RAN tas...

People with DS are known to have difficulties with expressive language, and often have difficulties with intelligibility. They often have stronger visual than verbal short-term memory skills and, therefore, reading has often been suggested as an intervention for speech and language in this population. However, there is as yet no firm evidence that reading can improve speech outcomes. This study...

Evidence from dual-task performance indicates that speakers prefer not to select simultaneous responses in picture naming and another unrelated task, suggesting a response selection bottleneck in naming. In particular, when participants respond to tones with a manual response and name pictures with superimposed semantically related or unrelated distractor words, semantic interference in naming ...

In two experiments, we examined the use of phonological information in naming in English. In both experiments, a priming technique was used. Primes and targets were both graphemically and phonemically similar, only phonemically similar, or unrelated. The results of Experiment 1 did not reveal a significant priming effect. The same design and materials were used in Experiment 2, but this time, t...

Given mounting evidence for working memory impairments in dyslexia, letter reversals during rapid automatic letter naming (phonological loop) or rapid automatic letter writing (orthographic loop) may reflect momentary inefficiency of working memory. Few of the children, with or without dyslexia, in a multi-generational family genetics study, produced reversals, but those with dyslexia produced ...

This study reports on several specific neurocognitive process predictors of reading outcomes for a sample of 278 children with reading disabilities. Three categories of response (i.e., poor, average, and good) were formed via growth curve models of six reading outcomes. Two nested discriminant function analyses were conducted to evaluate the predictive capability of the following models: (a) an...

The combination of investigating child and family characteristics sheds light on the constellation of risk factors that can ultimately lead to dyslexia. This family-risk study examines plausible preschool risk factors and their specificity. Participants (N = 196, 42 % girls) included familial risk (FR) children with and without dyslexia in Grade 3 and controls. First, we found impairments in ph...

The role of spelling recognition was examined in word reading skills and reading comprehension for dyslexic and nondyslexic children. Dyslexic and nondyslexic children were matched on their raw word reading proficiency. Relationships between spelling recognition and the following were examined for both groups of children: verbal ability, working memory, phonological measures, rapid naming, word...