The present study aimed to investigate the nature of rapid automatized naming tasks, considering three hypotheses about what they represent: (1) measures of retrieval of phonological codes from a long-term store; (2) measures of general processing speed; and (3) measures of visual pattern recognition processes. The participants were 174 children from the 5th grade of Brazilian private schools. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that none of the hypotheses were consistent with the data. However, in a structural regression model the factor 'general processing speed' was the only one that contributed significantly to rapid automatized naming.
rapid automatized naming; phonological processing; general processing speed; visual processing; reading
