Comparing Rapid Naming Skill in 7- and 8-Year-Old Normally Developed Children in Tehran

Objective Rapid naming is the ability of an individual to understand a visual symbol and retrieve it rapidly and accurately. When a person is naming, he/she may make a mistake or correct her/his mistake. Rapid naming tasks are the best tools for screening, assessment and early prevention of issues in this area. The rapid naming is important in reading skills, and there is a lack of basic information about rapid naming in Persian speaking children; thus, this study investigated the relationship between this skill, and age and gender, and compared the number of errors and self-correction in the 7- and 8-year-old age groups. Materials & Methods This cross-sectional and causal-comparative study was conducted on 203 normal male and female students in Autumn 2015 for 4 months. The study participants were selected using a multistage sampling method from 5 geographic regions (north, south, east, west, center) of Tehran City, Iran. The students had no hearing impairment, intelligence, learning, and visual deficiency. They enjoyed the natural growth of language and verbal fluency. Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and Rapid Alternating Stimulus (RAS) tasks were performed. The children's voices were recorded during the test implementation; when we were listening to the recorded voices, the naming time of each task was separately measured and recorded using a stopwatch. In addition to naming time, the number of errors and self-correction were counted. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to investigate the relationship between naming speed and age. This test was also used to determine the relationship between naming speed and gender. The relationship between the number of errors and self-correction and age were analyzed by the Chi-squared test. Results The MANOVA results revealed a significant difference in the mean scores of the naming time between the two age groups (f(6, 196)=9.395, P<0.05). The lowest mean score of naming time in the two age groups related to the numbers; the highest mean score of the naming time belonged to the color task. The mean score of naming time for each of the 6 tasks significantly differed (P<0.05) between the two age groups; however, in all of the tasks, the mean score of naming time in the two groups of girls and boys was not statistically significant (P>0.05). The Chi-squared test results suggested no significant difference between the frequency of a number of errors in the two age groups (x2=16.564, df=13, P>0.05). Moreover, there was no significant difference between the frequency of numbers of self-correction in the two age groups (x2=11.186, df=13, P>0.05). Conclusion With increasing age, the time of naming was reduced. However, gender has no effect on speed naming. Moreover, age has no effects on the number of errors and self-corrections. The significant difference in naming speed between the two age groups with narrow age interval indicates that this skill is very much affected by age. Thus, it is necessary to present the normative data of this skill in groups with narrow age intervals.