The contribution of rapid automatized naming to Chinese character recognition

•The longitudinal relation between RAN and Chinese character recognition was examined.•Children with slow digit RAN were more likely to be identified as reading disabled.•RAN significantly predicted Chinese character recognition for the slow naming group.•This predictive relationship did not apply to the matched subject group.

This study investigated the longitudinal relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and Chinese character recognition for Taiwanese children moving from grades 1 to 3. A sample pool of 1412 kindergartners took a Digit RAN subtask and were then grouped into the slow naming group (SNG) or the matched subject group (MSG). The two groups were controlled for gender, age, socio-economic status and non-verbal intelligence. They then took the RAN task, a Phonological Awareness Test and the Graded Character Recognition Test in each of the next three years. The results of statistical analyses showed that the third-grade SNG children were more likely to be identified as reading disabled in comparison to their MSG counterparts. Regardless of the grade the SNG participants were in, RAN remained a significant predictor of character recognition in the three years of investigation. However, this predictive relationship did not apply to the MSG.