Citation

Sideridis GD, Simos P, Mouzaki A, Stamovlasis D, Georgiou GK. J. Learn. Disabil. (Thousand Oaks) 2019; 52(1): 59-70.

Affiliation

University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0022219418775112

PMID

29771185

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explain the moderating role of rapid automatized naming (RAN) in word reading with a cusp catastrophe model. We hypothesized that increases in RAN performance speed beyond a critical point would be associated with the disruption in word reading, consistent with a "generic shutdown" hypothesis. Participants were 587 elementary schoolchildren (Grades 2-4), among whom 87 had reading comprehension difficulties per the IQ-achievement discrepancy criterion. Data were analyzed via a cusp catastrophe model derived from the nonlinear dynamics systems theory.

RESULTS indicated that for children with reading comprehension difficulties, as naming speed falls below a critical level, the association between core reading processes (word recognition and decoding) becomes chaotic and unpredictable. However, after the significant common variance attributed to motivation, emotional, and internalizing symptoms measures from RAN scores was partialed out, its role as a bifurcation variable was no longer evident. Taken together, these findings suggest that RAN represents a salient cognitive measure that may be associated with psychoemotional processes that are, at least in part, responsible for unpredictable and chaotic word reading behavior among children with reading comprehension deficits.

Language: en

Keywords

bifurcation; catastrophe theory; cusp; rapid automatized naming; reading disabilities; word-pseudoword decoding