The Importance of Automaticity for Developing Expertise in Reading

Automaticity refers to the ability to perform complex skills with minimal attention and conscious effort. Automaticity is essential for higher‐order thinking, such as skilled reading and writing, because important sub‐skills must be performed accurately, quickly, and effortlessly. If reading sub‐skills are performed automatically, then higher‐order aspects of the task, such as comprehension or metacognitive functions, can be performed effectively at the same time. How do students become automatic at these sub‐skills? What are the indicators that can be used to determine whether a student is automatic? What are the psychological mechanisms that allow one to perform complex skills automatically? These questions are addressed in this article.