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Updated: Nov 17, 2025
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Decomposing the Variance in Reading Comprehension to Reveal the Unique and Common Effects of Language and Decoding
Published on: October 11, 2018
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Automaticity as an independent trait in predicting reading outcomes in middle-school
Tanja C Roembke1, Eliot Hazeltine2, Deborah K Reed3
1Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen Universit.
Developmental Psychology
|February 11, 2021
Summary
Many middle schoolers struggle with reading due to poor word recognition automaticity. This study shows automaticity, measured by masked word reading, reliably predicts reading fluency in these students.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Many middle school students exhibit deficits in fundamental reading skills.
- A potential contributing factor is insufficient automaticity in word-level lexical processing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of automaticity in reading skills among middle school students.
- To determine if automaticity is a reliable predictor of decoding and fluency.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a novel backward masking paradigm with 444 middle school students (grades 6-8).
- Administered masked and unmasked word reading tasks, assessing automaticity and knowledge.
- Correlated task performance with standardized measures of decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension.
Main Results:
- Decoding skills were primarily predicted by word knowledge (unmasked performance).
- Reading fluency was uniquely predicted by automaticity (masked performance).
- Automaticity demonstrated stability across two testing sessions.
Conclusions:
- Automaticity in word-level processing is an individually reliable reading trait for middle school students.
- This trait uniquely predicts reading fluency, highlighting its importance for intervention.
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