History and significance of rapid automatized naming

In this review, the origins and history of a test of rapid automatized nami ng (RAN) are traced from nineteenth-century classical brain-behavior analys es of cases of acquired "alexia without agraphia" through adaptations to st udies of normal and reading disabled children. The element of speed (of res ponding verbally to a visual stimulus) was derived fi;om a test of color na ming developed over 50 years ago as a bedside measure of recovery from brai n injuries Merging the "visual-verbal" connection essential to reading (spe cific) with the response time element (general), RAN turned out to be a use ful correlate and predictor of reading competence, accounting even for vari ance beyond that accounted for by timed tests of discrete naming. As one of the two deficits highlighted in the Double Deficit hypothesis with phonolo gical awareness, RAN has emerged as something more than a particularly diff icult challenge to a unitary phonological retrieval deficit,and has itself been subjected to further dissection. Coming full circle to its origins, re cent research suggests that RAN taps both visual-verbal (language domain) a nd processing speed (executive domain) contributions to reading.