Rapid automatized naming test: correlation with reading and norms for Russian-speaking schoolchildren

The Rapid Automatized Naming test (RAN) is widely used in research practice for many European languages. It involves processes such as phonological and orthographic processing, symbol recognition, and articulation. As these processes are also involved in reading, RAN results correlate with reading skills in primary school children and predict reading proficiency in preschoolers. Despite the widespread use of RAN among speakers of different languages, the relationship between different versions of RAN and reading in the Russian language has not been investigated, and normative data on RAN performance by Russian-speaking children have not been presented. Using the Standardized Assessment of Reading Skills (SARS; Kornev, Ishimova, 2010), we divided 290 students from grades I to IV into typically reading and reading-impaired groups. Participants performed a task of rapid automatized naming of digits, where they had to name a sequence of digits as quickly as possible without pauses. The majority of participants also completed a task of rapid automatized naming of colors. We recorded the time taken to complete the tasks. In our analysis, firstly, we found that children with reading impairments performed significantly worse than typically reading children in both tasks, and the naming speed for digits and colors in both groups depended on the year of education. Typically reading children showed the most progress in both RAN tasks between grades I and II. Secondly, we observed that the better a child's performance on RAN, the faster they read aloud. Thus, we confirmed the relationship between RAN and reading in primary school children in the Russian language. Finally, we provided normative data on the speed of naming digits and colors in grades I to IV.