Relationship Between Rapid Naming Speed and Reading Speed as a Marker of Reading Difficulties of Estonian Children from 6 to 8 Years

Reading is one of the fundamental skills for successful performance in modern society. Reading acquisition is one of the most important tasks in primary level of education. The early identification of reading difficulties (RD) enables educators to apply the treatment as early as possible. Rapid naming (RN) is one of the reliable methods used to identify RD and risk for RD. The relationship between RN skills, especially RN speed and reading decoding speed, is investigated as a good tool for predicting reading at decoding level and welldocumented in languages using non-transparent orthography. Few researches are carried out on RN skills in transparent orthographies. The current research is the first attempt to investigate RN skills of children speaking Estonian, highly transparent Finno-Ugric language. The aim of this study is to examine longitudinally RN speed and decoding skills of children at the age 6, 7 and 8 years to detect the relationship between RN speed in prereading age and reading age after starting formal reading instruction.