Understanding the relations between RAN letter subtest components and word reading in first-grade students

First-grade students (N = 221) were individually tested on a battery of cognitive and achievement measures of verbal fluency, visual attention, phonological awareness, orthographic recognition, rapid automatized naming (RAN) of letters and objects, and reading. All tests were subjected to postacquisition scoring, and all RAN measures were segregated into measures of articulation time, pause time, and consistency of the pause time. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that word reading was directly and significantly predicted by RAN letter naming and general RAN cognitive processing time of objects. Moreover, RAN letter reading constructs were significantly and directly predicted by the latent variables of phonological awareness, orthographic recognition, and general RAN object articulation and cognitive processing times. RAN letter naming constructs were also significantly and indirectly predicted by visual attention. The reading model was found to be consistent with a total mediation of the relation of phonological awareness and reading through RAN letter naming and supported the validity of the RAN letter naming subtest as a basic letter reading test. These findings supported the double-deficit hypothesis for letter reading. We suggest that phonological memory is a basic factor underlying general RAN cognitive processing time of objects and domain-specific information associated with phonemes and their graphic representations.