Effects of indicating expected naming times during reading practice for beginning readers

Beginning readers often expend great effort in identifying printed words. Decoding processes, i.e. processes for determining the words that are being represented in print, demand much of the beginning reader' s attention. Much practice is needed to make decoding automatic, so that the reader can deal with and react to meaning quickly via the printed word. The objective of the present experiment was to explore the feasibility of a new way to provide practice at building efficiency in word reading. A group of young readers practised naming a list of words which were relatively unfamiliar to them in print. During practice the words were successively displayed on the computer screen and remained there until a response was given . While the words were visible a horizontal bar was drawn across the screen at variable speed for half of the group of readers . Drawing speed was calculated on the basis of pre-experimental reading scores and updated by previous naming latencies during the experiment. Results showed that graphical indications of estimated naming time initially caused a substantial reduction in reading latencies. After some practice, however, this effect on latency diminished, but a slightly increased error rate remained.