Fascinating paper on Naming Speed and Phonological Awareness

My son now 11yo was low in both areas, and now has very good phonological skills thanks to lots of work on reading but still has relatively low average naming speed…we were told that deficit will stay, and to work around it. How do you improve rapid picture naming?

Laura, that wasa great find. Particuarly for me because my son actually had the Naglieri test they referred to in the article (and which is the subject of other threads on these boards) And he actually did very very well on those subtests. But if I read that article correctly they say that the real predictor is RAN and phonological skills. So it again leads me to believe he has a RAN problem (he did poorly on picture naming)

Thanks!

Karen,
I meant to ask you about RAN (or rapid picture naming). Another trait our boys share! This is something I’m particularly concerned about because my son’s in the 1%ile in rapid picture naming.

SAR,
As far as I know there’s not a whole lot that can be done to remediate RAN. Shirin offered some great suggestions on my previous post, but I couldn’t find too much information on it and no specific programs (at least nothing currently available) to help with RAN.

Why focus on it, if it can’t be changed? I’d take the pragmatic approach and work on reading skills. RAN is part of the WJIII cognitive battery. My son’s reading has improved, but it has taken 4 years for him to be able to read at grade level, and millions of hours of readig aloud.

Apparently, you were doing what needed to be done.

See:

http://www.tli.com/fluecomp.html

Comments?

About 10 minutes a day adds up over the long run and it’s worth it.

What is naming speed?
How do they test for it?

k :-)

from another thread on this subject that I’ve saved all this time.

here’s the link:

http://forums.weta.org/ldonline/phorum/read.php?f=3&i=4319&t=4263

PS , I’m not sure how my son’s picture naming was measured.- I think the picture vocabulary subtest of the WJIII achievement test. I don’t think this is a RAN test per se, but its indicative of something. He has great memory, so its not a memory thing. I think its a retrieval thing.

I’ve been wondering about this….in addition to low RAN scores, did your children also have low scores in word retrieval? Or, if this subtest wasn’t given, do they have some noticable difficulties in word finding.

I’m wondering if the two go hand and hand. It would make sense.

Karen, I can’t say my son has a wonderful memory, but sometimes he surprises me with the things he does remember. I think he would have a much better one if he could retrieve the information more effectively.

And, supposedly, there are ways to improve word retrieval, although I’ don’t know how effective they are.

I am not Karen or SAR but as I understand it, they don’t always go hand in hand. My son has issues with both but not all kids do. RAN requires visual-verbal integration which word retrieval does not. So there can be different parts of the brain involved.

Beth

We didn’t have any RAN or word retrieval skills tested initially. In a recent assessment conducted by someone different, he concluded some RAN deficits. Not sure how he concluded that - the tests given were the ROsner auditory test, Gray oral reading, elliston something and the WRAT-R.

Here’s what I notice about his speech: its always been a little funky. He’s a fast speaker, and can talk for long periods of time with good vocabulary. But sometimes he pauses, and then repeats himself. There’s a break in the rythm. I notice this mostly when he’s relating a story. There’s something going on but I don’t think its been fully tested.

I didn’t know that RAN requires visual -verbal integration. There was a subtest of the Naglieri CAS test my son took that tested “verbal -spatial” skills. He scores over 99%tile. Don’t know if its the same think or not… if anyone else does please chime in.

Rapid picture naming is test 18 on the WJIII cognitive battery.

The answer is no, but he has other areas of weakness; however, he dos not have accompanying social skill, attention, or behavior problems so we had more time to really focus on reading, and writing. Every kid is different, though and it’s up to the parents I think to find out what works and follow through on it. We are totally through with interventions through the school, because they are so diluted by teaching kids how to organize their backpacks and how to behave that they don’t have time to really teach reading and remedial academics. What worked for us may not be right for another child; our son is lucky to have superior intelligence and this has carried him through in a big way, but we also knew we could push him and he had the cognitive ability to come through.

Hi Beth,
Thanks for explaining that! In trying to learn all of this I often find that the more I know the more I realize I don’t know.

One of the reasons I was wondering about the connection is because when I question my son about the things he’s trying to explain he’ll tell me he can imagine it in is mind, but he can’t remember what it’s called. So it seems like his visualization skills are okay (?). Of course, everything always seems to be much more complex than appearances.

I noticed your recommendation on another post about AVKO sequential spelling and am thinking about ordering it. This afternoon I helped my son with his book report which was a MAJOR undertaking. He did an A to Z Mysteries Series (a collection I’m not familiar with, but the teacher chose it). I think the title was The Canary Caper. Anyhow, it took us two weeks to read (a chapter a day). There was absolutely no way my son could read this book on his own so we did things like I’d read a chapter then have him read it, or we’d take turns with the pages. Eventually we ran out of time and I read the longer pages while he’d read the shorter ones. While we were reading I had my son choose the important information in each chapter and write notes about it. This was very difficult for him and took a lot of socratic questioning from me! This really was a necessity because if we hadn’t taken notes, my son would not have remembered anything from the story!!!! This report is going to be about 20 pages long (if we include the notes and I think we should).

My point here is that besides having to concentrate on summarizing important parts of the story, memorizing characters and understanding the plot, my son had an enormously difficult time spelling. Even “her” (as hir) and “were” as (where). Also, he’d continue to make the same errors each time and was really frustrated.

By the way, I’ve tried to contact Neuronet to see if there is a local provider, but I’m going to guess there are not many on the west coast.

First, a 20 page report at his age? That homework assignment sounds excessive.

But anyway, spelling is a whole lot more challenging than reading because you are encoding the sounds from scratch basically.. At least when you read you have the word to look at. And then writing it down - forget it.

We reviewed my son’s spelling list tonight, and he can spell so much better orally than if he has to write it. So we decided he’ll whisper the word to himself before putting pencil to paper. It will be interesting to see if that helps.

Well.. this is on the paper with the “mid-sized” line spacing so there were fewer words per page than regularly lined paper. Also I included the 10 pages of “notes.” I had him outline (in his own words and as simply as possible) what occurred in each chapter (there was 9 or 10 chapters and I had him outline a chapter per day (this was necessary because he would forget the characters and the story). The remaining 10 pages contained a title page, character summary (basically just the names of the characters), a plot summary (this was about 4 pages and the notes he took helped tremendously), what he thought about the book (this was a very short page!), cover page, etc…. A few of these pages were only short bits of information. So it sounds longer than it actually was!

In doing this report, it’s basically all in “his own words” so it was very very difficult for him. I did have to help sometimes by asking questions or telling him a variety of ways something could be expressed (he had to choose the best way and try to come up with his own words if he felt that was better).

I’m sure glad it’s over.

But next month we have another one! :-(

Beth,

why would you say “RAN requires visual-verbal
integration which word retrieval does not”?

I thought that RAN is just a testing tool. I think that when looking for a word we usually have a “mental picture” of what do we want to name, hence the mechanism is very simlar as the one used when performing RAN activity. I know that there are parts of language that are hard to visualize but I always thought that word retrival difficulties are harder to diagnose hence the RAN is just a tool to diagnose these kind of problem.

See;

http://www.wordfinding.com/tests.html

Word finding is a simple way of saying what SLP folks call RAN. Yes, the testing vehicles call it RAN. SLP’s also refer to the problem as RAN. Word finding, to me anyway, is a synonymous term. (I love a word with two “y’s”, don’t you?)

While researching RAN deficits, I learned that (according to researchers in this field), preschoolers with RAN deficits were generally slower at color naming (color naming speed) than children without RAN deficits. Also, they feel this may be useful in helping identify children who may have problems later with reading.

Phonological processing is not necessarily the only core deficit in developmental dyslexia, there can be a second core deficit and that is rate-of-processing problems (RAN). Apparently, some children have fundamental difficulties in developing sufficently rapid processing rates which are necessary for fluent reading and reading comprehension.

OK. I am a parent so perhaps my terminology is not exact enough. I am trying to differenciate between difficulties in word retrieval in just speech versus difficulty retrieving words when given a visual symbol. The later is clearly related to reading. The former alone is not. I have some difficulties with word retrieval—especially when tired and stressed but I am a very fast and fluent reader. I learned to read easily at age 4.

We have done Neuronet which has improved my son’s word retrieval in speech as well as reading fluency. They use a fast naming task and at the end of this post is the description (from the website of Neuronet). Note that C is visual-verbal integration.

The only times my son can’t find a word now is if it is a new vocabulary word. For example, his music class at school has been playing ukuleles at school and he described the instrument but couldn’t remember its name for several seconds. Now, he doesn’t always find the exactly right word—I have noticed that my son now uses approx. words. Patti, a slt, who often posts here had a post awhile ago about how this is indicative of finding the right file cabinet but not file. So we have made a lot of progress—but not completely there.

Beth

http://www.neuronetonline.com/

I envision the fast naming task, very oversimplified, to comprise:
a) auditory input from eardrum to primary auditory projection area of cortex = auditory perception
b) visual input from cornea to primary visual projection area of cortex = visual perception
c) interneuron system linking auditory and visual primary cortex areas = visual/verbal integration
d) interneuron system linking primary cortex areas to motor intention and motor execution areas (parietal pre-motor; frontal motor) = ability to say what you hear (no meaning attached) and do what you see (copy movement with no meaning attached)

— Any or all of these areas can be problems. NN specifically deals with neural synchrony problems, or poorly synchronized neural firing leading to poor quality of neural representation of perception or movement. NN specifically and directly addresses quality of neural representation of minimal perceptual and motor units. Visual/verbal integration can be targeted only indirectly, and should be addressed only after symmetrical and reciprocal timing of interhemispheric function is established.

My son had indicators of RAN problems by age 4. He was in speech and language therapy and on the Peabody test for expressive language the slt had to go down to the 2 year old level for him to know all the pictures but he didn’t miss enough in a row (I think five) until he got to the 11 year old level. Plus, it took her twice as long as normal to adminsiter the test.

I think it is all there sometimes. We just don’t know what we are looking for and we don’t always understand what people are saying to us until much later.

Beth

Beth,
That is very true! I was just going over some old reports (from when my son was a toddler) and noticed in one of them that I had told the OT that when my son would learn a new word, he’d say it once or twice and then rarely use it again. Looking back this strikes me as a sign of retrival difficulties even then.

Also, when my son was a toddler I had tons of those baby books filled with photos of “things” for identification. When my daughter was a toddler she used to enjoy learning the names, identifying them and showing us how much she knew.

Whereas my son would identify a couple of them and then start making up goofy names. Even though I knew something was a little “different,” I thought he did this because he was bored with the task. I didn’t realize he was using humor to avoid doing something he was having great difficulty with. Looking back now, it’s much more obvious.

Laura,

What is his reading level? I tried AVKO with my son last year who was reading on about a second grade level. It got beyond his reading level really quickly. It is most appropriate for older readers who can not spell. You have to be able to decode multisyllable words, which my son cannot.

I just started Scholastic spelling with my son, which is written by Louisa Moats, a leading reading specialist. I think it will be very good for him. We are using it instead of the school program, which is just random lists of words. My son is essentially a nonspeller and we are starting at grade 2. He is in fourth grade.

Beth

Where can I read about this program. Dr. Moats (O-G roots—very deep—but with many, many other methods & strategies) is one of my fav’s. She has done so much to stir the whole language pot. What a woman!

///

Hi Beth,
His reading level is at about “Henry and Mudge” I’ve started introducing him to “Nate the Great.” Although he can sometimes decode multi-syllable words fairly well, there are other times when he gets stuck on “the” or “was.” His reading fluency and accuracy is very inconsistent. Sometimes he’ll go quickly through a sentence and then in the next sentence he might get stuck on every word. Sometimes I follow along with my finger under every word and occassionally I’ll take my finger away for awhile and have him read without it (until he starts making numerous mistakes).

I recently started having him read word lists for speed (we make a game out of it and use a stopwatch). This evening he had an impossible time with “quash, quad, squash and squad.” Even untimed he kept adding an “s” to quash and quad and then he kept saying “swamp” for a lot of the words (this word was later in the list).

Sometimes it’s as if he doesn’t see letters in the words, but I’ll ask him and he’ll think about it for awhile and then tell me that he does see it.

Tonight he told me that he had written something about a friend of his named John. He told me he spelled his name with a “G” because he forgot what “J” looks like. It seems like I’ve gone over letters, words and reading a million times in as many ways possible (visual, auditory, having him write in the air or on each others back, spelling and saying….etc….) and he still can’t seem to get it automatically.

Please let me know more about Scholastic spelling and where to purchase it (from Scholastic’s website, or a good educational resources store?).

Thank you! :-)

You described his reading perfectly!! We jjust went back to Nate the Great, and he can read most of it on his own, but if he fumbles on a new or tough word its hard for him to recover. And mostly he doesn’t have the stamina/fluency to read this level on his own, although his decoding is OK. His tracking is better, he’s reading without the finger more, but uses it as needed. Not skipping lines so much. The thing that really has me stumped is when he adds letter sounds to a word. He can blend “str” for example pretty well - I saw that when we did great leaps. But when reading he may add other sounds too. Weird.

Ok. Janis, from this board, recommended this to me. Her daughter’s charter school is using the program, on her recommendation. I think I have the website at work but let me give you what I have at home.

It is called Scholastic Spelling by Louisa Moats and Barbara Foreman. The website was actually no help and Louisa Moats name did not even appear on the product. I called Scholastic. I have two of the workbooks—2nd and third grade. There is a teacher’s manual and one other supplementary product.

I like it. We just started using it this week so can’t comment on much else about it.

Beth

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/phonics.htm

Word finding is not that directly connected to speed. RAN is going to slow you down no matter what you are doing — you just can’t spew the stuff quickly. If at any point in the processing there’s a clog in the pipeline, it will slow you down.

Word retrieval, on the other hand, is a little more elusive. You’re hunting through your verbal file cabinet — but could be that the trouble isn’t the speed of the synapses, it’s getting access to the right drawers of the file cabinets.

THink about the kiddos who can give you a sort-of-great-sounding verbal answer… but somehow it really isn’t what they want to mean at all. (NVLD) No speed issues — but significant organizing-the-info ones.

I like that–finding the right drawers. That fits my experience with word retrieval. I don’t have any processing speed issues but do have word retrieval issues.

Beth