Abstract
Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) have been shown to be powerful predictors of reading achievement across many languages. However, literature remains unclear: (a) whether RAN is independent of PA, (b) about the specific influences of PA and RAN on reading and spelling, and (c) about the efficacy of a RAN intervention. This study aims to address these issues by means of an intervention design. Precisely, the objectives are (a) to determine whether training one competence involves or not an effect on the other, (b) to examine whether each intervention based on oral abilities (PA vs. RAN) could improve word reading and word spelling performances, and (c) to assess the efficacy of a RAN-objects’ intervention. Thirty-six French-speaking second graders, from two Belgian elementary schools, were divided into two groups, and received either a PA- or a RAN-objects’ intervention. Twenty-five-minute lessons took place at school twice a week over a period of 2 months. Both groups were compared on multiple experimental measures (PA, RAN, word reading, and word spelling), before and immediately after the intervention, and 6 months later. Results showed specific efficacy of the two interventions, with participants trained in one ability outperforming those from the other group on this specific ability at post-test. Moreover, the PA intervention revealed transfer effects on the sub-lexical processes of spelling, while the RAN intervention enhanced word reading speed. Finally, the results demonstrated the efficacy of a RAN-objects’ intervention for the first time. These findings provide a new piece of evidence showing the independence of PA and RAN, each process influencing the acquisition of literacy skills in a different way. The efficacy and the specific transfer effects of both interventions open up new perspectives for prevention and targeted remediation of reading disabilities.
Highlights
Mastering literacy skills is a necessary ability for people’s social, educational, and professional development
A second purpose of this study is to find out the specific causal influence of rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness (PA) on word reading and spelling by examining the transfer effects of the interventions
15 children who took part in the intervention were removed from the analyses because they met one of the exclusion criteria: (a) three children scored below two standard deviations for their age in non-verbal IQ [as measured by the matrices’ subtest of the WISC-IV; Wechsler, 2005]; (b) four children scored below two standard deviations for their age in productive vocabulary; (c) five children had been receiving speech therapy for language impairment or difficulties with written language; and (d) three children had dropped out at follow-up because they moved to another school
Summary
Mastering literacy skills is a necessary ability for people’s social, educational, and professional development. Research on the precursors of reading is of great importance in grasping the nature of the underlying cognitive processes in reading They constitute malleable fertile ground, on which professionals can work in pre-readers to facilitate literacy development and prevent learning disabilities. Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are well established as having a major impact on literacy acquisition in a lot of alphabetic writing systems varying in orthographic consistency (e.g., Vaessen and Blomert, 2010; Ziegler et al, 2010; Caravolas et al, 2012; Moll et al, 2014; see Scarborough, 1998 for a meta-analysis) They are among the most robust correlates of reading difficulties (e.g., Pennington and Lefly, 2001; Ho et al, 2002; Landerl et al, 2013; Torppa et al, 2013). It is still unclear whether it is possible to enhance RAN, and whether it can provide benefits in reading or spelling
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