The Role of Serial and Discrete Processing in Rapid Naming and Reading Fluency Development

• Author / Creator

  Altani, Angeliki

• This dissertation includes three papers that investigate the distinction between serial and discrete processing in rapid naming and word reading tasks, across three elementary grades (1, 3, and 5) and two languages (English and Greek). Rapid naming and word reading tasks were utilized in two presentation formats: multiple stimulus displays (i.e., serial naming or reading) and isolated stimulus displays (i.e., discrete naming or reading). The first study examined the correlational patterns between serial and discrete versions of digit naming and word reading tasks across grades in English, using serial and discrete digit naming to index word reading processes. Results showed that serial and discrete digit naming reflect not only shared but also distinct processes related to word reading. Evidence also advanced the idea that serial digit naming can be used as an index of sequential multi-element processing both within individual words and across multiple words. Children from different grades were clustered into two classes, namely beginning, and advanced readers. Between the two classes of readers, discrete and serial word reading tasks started off as rather similar but grew further apart with age and reading proficiency. This finding supported the idea that fluent reading of words sequences requires additional skills beyond the ability to recognize individual words.The second study examined the interrelations among individual word recognition, word list reading, and text reading across grades and orthographies. It also examined the unique role of sequential multi-item processing (indexed by serial digit naming) in reading multiple words in lists and in text. Results showed that the correlation between individual word recognition and both word list and text reading gradually decreased across grades, irrespective of contextual processing requirements. Moreover, serial digit naming (indexing multi-item processing) uniquely predicted both word-list and text reading fluency in Grades 3 and 5, beyond single word recognition speed. The same pattern of results was observed across languages. These findings suggest that an additional component of processing multi-item sequences appears to emerge by Grade 3, after a basic level of both accuracy and speed in word recognition has been achieved, offering a potential mechanism underlying the transition from dealing with one word at a time to efficient processing of word sequences. The third study examined the development of the serial advantage, defined as the gain in naming rate in the serial over the discrete task of the same content, between grades and different types of content in English and Greek. Serial tasks yielded faster naming rates across grades, irrespective of task content. This finding suggested that there is some form of temporal overlap during processing of multiple stimulus displays. It also supported the idea that the ability to coordinate multiple successive items at different overlapping processing stages (i.e., cascading) may be a critical element in the development of efficient serial naming and multiword reading. However, content-specific characteristics influenced the changes of the serial advantage between grades, suggesting that practice and familiarity with the content on the naming or reading task may impact the development of serial advantage. Overall, this dissertation provides evidence for an additional component skill involved in word reading and text reading fluency, over and above efficient word recognition and single item identification. This component skill – indexed by serial naming tasks – relates to the efficiency of processing multiple successive items and may be a critical and missing element towards understanding reading fluency and its development.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Reading Fluency
  • Rapid Naming
  • Word Recognition
  • Cross-linguistic
  • Word Reading

• Graduation date

  Spring 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-rc44-jy07

• License

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