Abstract
During reading acquisition, word recognition is assumed to undergo a developmental shift from slow serial/sublexical processing of letter strings to fast parallel processing of whole word forms. This shift has been proposed to be detected by examining the size of the relationship between serial- and discrete-trial versions of word reading and rapid naming tasks. Specifically, a strong association between serial naming of symbols and single word reading suggests that words are processed serially, whereas a strong association between discrete naming of symbols and single word reading suggests that words are processed in parallel as wholes. In this study, 429 Grade 1, 3, and 5 English-speaking Canadian children were tested on serial and discrete digit naming and word reading. Across grades, single word reading was more strongly associated with discrete naming than with serial naming of digits, indicating that short high-frequency words are processed as whole units early in the development of reading ability in English. In contrast, serial naming was not a unique predictor of single word reading across grades, suggesting that within-word sequential processing was not required for the successful recognition for this set of words. Factor mixture analysis revealed that our participants could be clustered into two classes, namely beginning and more advanced readers. Serial naming uniquely predicted single word reading only among the first class of readers, indicating that novice readers rely on a serial strategy to decode words. Yet, a considerable proportion of Grade 1 students were assigned to the second class, evidently being able to process short high-frequency words as unitized symbols. We consider these findings together with those from previous studies to challenge the hypothesis of a binary distinction between serial/sublexical and parallel/lexical processing in word reading. We argue instead that sequential processing in word reading operates on a continuum, depending on the level of reading proficiency, the degree of orthographic transparency, and word-specific characteristics.
Highlights
Rapid, automatic word recognition is viewed as a crucial component of fluent reading (LaBerge and Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1985; Wolf and Katzir-Cohen, 2001)
The resulting Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was high (0.99; 95%CI: 0.98−0.99), indicating excellent inter-rater reliability (IRR) in coding response times and suggesting that a minimum amount of measurement error was introduced in data processing by independent coders
Our results showed that (a) the contribution of serial and discrete naming to word reading is distinct beyond any shared variance, and (b) the serial and discrete naming and—especially—reading tasks start off as rather similar, yet their relationship gradually decreases with age and reading proficiency
Summary
Automatic word recognition is viewed as a crucial component of fluent reading (LaBerge and Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1985; Wolf and Katzir-Cohen, 2001). Reading speed is slower during the initial phases of reading development, or when the number of letters increases (in multisyllabic words) This is thought to be indicative of serial processing for computing the pronunciations of words, in which graphemes are mapped into their corresponding phonemes one after the other (Ans et al, 1998; Coltheart et al, 2001; Ziegler et al, 2003). The speed with which a printed word is identified and named has been assumed to reflect the way the stimulus is processed and, subsequently, the level of automaticity in word reading (Bowers and Swanson, 1991) In line with this view, Ehri and Wilce (1983) proposed that we can determine whether familiar words are recognized automatically, as completely unitized symbols, when their naming times have reached the same response rate as the naming of single digits
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