Dyslexia (under revision) 1 COMPONENT PROCESSES SUBSERVING RAPID AUTOMATIZED NAMING IN DYSLEXIC AND NONDYSLEXIC READERS

The current study investigated which time components of rapid automatized naming (RAN) might predict group differences between dyslexic and nondyslexic readers (matched for age and reading level), and how these components relate to distinct reading measures. Subjects performed two RAN tasks (letters and objects) and data were analyzed through a response time analysis. Our results demonstrated that impaired RAN performance by dyslexic readers mainly stem from enhanced inter-item pause times and not from difficulties at the level of post-access motor production (expressed by articulation rates). Moreover, we also verified that overall RAN performance in dyslexics, and inter-item pause times, account for a significant proportion of variance in reading ability besides the effect of phonological processes. Therefore, it appears that underlying non-phonological factors may lie at the root of the association between rapid naming and reading ability. In normal readers, RAN performance becomes associated with reading ability only at early ages (i.e., in reading-matched controls), and in this case it appears to be the inter-item pause times of the RAN task that explain the association.