I-ROAR: A free platform for Italian Rapid Online Assessment of Reading

Standardized reading batteries require in-person administration of time-consuming, expensive tests, making rapid testing and monitoring of large populations difficult. ROAR is a recent web-based automated rapid-assessment platform (Yeatman et al., 2021) producing scores that accurately approximate in-person standardized tests for English (r=0.94). It is grounded on scientific models postulating lexical categorization as a crucial stage in natural reading (Gagl et al., 2021) and cognitive-psychology studies suggesting cognitive processes involved in lexical-decision tasks as also involved in visual word recognition (Balota et al., 2006). However, whether promising results obtained in the deep English orthography are generalizable to shallow orthographies like Italian is unclear. To investigate this, we aim to expand English ROAR to Italian by analyzing I-ROAR predictivity on Italian standardized reading tests. We are assessing a representative sample of Italian primary school children with standardized tests to determine their language and reading development range. Our core I-ROAR test is a dual-choice, time-limited lexical decision task that children can self-administer through a web browser, serving as an approximation measure of reading skills. We will analyze linear mixed models with I-ROAR scores and ages as covariates and subject and item identity as random factors. Based on similar behavioral effects in lexical categorization and reading observed in transparent orthographies (Aguasvivas et al., 2020) and theoretical reading models postulating lexical categorization as a crucial stage of visual word recognition without orthographic-depth distinctions (Gagl et al., 2021), we expect English findings to be generalizable to Italian, despite different orthographic depths. However, we anticipate a faster enhancement of reading accuracy and a higher impact of reaction times compared to accuracy (Caravolas et al., 2013), as well as a higher impact of age on Italian word recognition due to the prominent use of the sublexical reading route in the early stages of Italian reading acquisition (Casani, 2021).