Development of serial processing in reading and rapid naming

Serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) is more strongly related to reading fluency than naming of isolated words, suggesting that the implementation of serial processing may underlie the RAN-reading relationship. In this study, 107 Greek children from Grade 2 and 107 from Grade 6 were tested with discrete and serial naming of digits, objects, and words in 50-item arrays. The correlation between discrete and serial word reading was very high in Grade 2 but only moderate in Grade 6. In confirmatory factor analysis, a reading-naming latent structure fit the Grade 2 data best; in contrast, a serial-discrete structure fit the Grade 6 data. Thus, the superficial longitudinal stability of RAN-reading correlations belies vastly different patterns of interrelations, indicative of changes in the developing cognitive processes underlying both naming and reading. Word fluency tasks in Grade 2 are apparently accomplished largely as a series of isolated individual word naming trials even though multiple individual letters in each word may be processed in parallel. In contrast, specifically serial procedures are applied in Grade 6, presumably via simultaneous processing of multiple individual words at successive levels. It is proposed that this feat requires endogenous control of cognitive cascades.