This study investigated whether changing the letter composition of the Denckla and Rudel (1976) RAN task influenced task performance (speed and accuracy) and the RAN-word identification skill relationship in first-grade children. To accomplish this, 383 first-grade children were administered four different RAN tasks in October, and performance on these measures was used to predict word identification skill in April. The various RAN tasks consisted of the Denckla and Rudel RAN letter-naming task and three alternative RAN tasks constructed by making a letter substitution that replaced the letter o within the Denckla and Rudel letter matrix (a, d, o, p, s) with another letter. The three alternative RAN tasks were designed to increase visual confusion (q for o), phonological confusion (v for o), or the combination of visual and phonological confusion (b for o). The results suggest that (a) substituting a letter that was visually similar to other letters within the Denckla and Rudel letter matrix had the greatest influence on RAN speed and accuracy performance, (b) substitutions that increased the phonological similarity of letters in the matrix predicted more unique variance in future word identification skill, (c) RAN accuracy performance as a predictor of future word identification skill provided little unique variance beyond that associated with RAN speed performance, and (d) RAN predicted significant variance in future word identification skill beyond that associated with the autoregressor in children who were at the earliest stages of reading development.
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