Rapid naming, reading and comprehension in students with learning difficulties.

PURPOSE To compare and correlate the performance of students with learning difficulties in rapid naming, reading and comprehension. METHODS Participants were 32 students from 4th grade of elementary school of both genders, with ages between 11 years and 4 months and 12 years and 7 months. The first and second oral reading of a text selected based on the indication of 4th grade teachers were conducted, as well as the first and second reading comprehension task composed by four questions presented right after the reading, to which students should answered orally, and the rapid naming task from the Test of Cognitive-Linguistic Performance, individual version. RESULTS Differences were found between the first and the second comprehension scores, and between rapid naming, first and second reading. There was a strong correlation between comprehension and reading, suggesting that the performance in the first reading significantly influenced the performance in the second reading, which also occurred for comprehension. CONCLUSION The delay in the activities of naming, reading and comprehension in the first evaluation provoked failures in the phoneme-grapheme conversion that may be enough to cause learning difficulties in reading.