Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) and Rapid Alternative Stimulus have been proven to be an effective and enjoyable activity to do with young children.

The RAN and RAS Tests are individually administered measures designed to estimate an individual's ability to recognize a visual symbol such as a letter or color and name it accurately and rapidly. The tests consist of rapid automatized naming tests (Letters, Numbers, Colors, Objects) and two rapid alternating stimulus tests (2-Set Letters and Numbers, and 3-Set Letters, Numbers and Colors). 

In the 1960s, neurologist Norman Geschwind studied various cases of individuals with alexia to determine both what kind of brain damage led to their reading difficulties and exactly what aspects of reading were affected. 

Based in part on the foundation of Dejerine’s earlier findings as well as Wernicke’s notions of connections among cerebral areas, Geschwind’s (1965) pa- per “Disconnexion Syndromes in Animals and Man” conceptualized the core deficit in alexia as a disconnection between the visual and ver- bal processes in the brain. 

Geschwind also reported the case of a patient with alexia who also experienced great difficulty with naming colors despite the ability to perceive colors accurately (Geschwind & Fusillo 1966). 

Geschwind was interested in the slow and effortful processing required for this individual to come up with the names of colors, and he devised a timed test of color naming. 

When doing RAN assessments, color splotches, familiar objects in the child’s environment, basic shapes, numbers, and letters are generally used. 

RAN and RAS Tests are considered to be the "gold standard" of naming tests.

The two most widely used standardized tests of RAN in the United States are the Rapid Automatized Naming-Rapid Alternating Stimulus (RAN-RAS) Tests developed by Denckla and expanded by Wolf & Denckla (2005; published by Pro-Ed), and the rapid naming subtests of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Pro- cessing (CTOPP), by Wagner and colleagues (1999; published by Pro-Ed). 

These tests reflect three decades of clinical evidence and research across all parts of the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Asia, and Australia that have examined the relation between processing speed and reading. This wealth of research evidence added to the fact that the tests are simple, fun, and quick to administer (i.e., five to ten minutes for all six tests) make tests an important addition to any prediction battery or diagnostic assessment of oral and written language from age five to adulthood.

Reading has been compared to rocket science and to conducting a symphony, yet we expect children to have mastered this deeply sophisticated set of skills by the age of seven. 

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about reading is that children develop reading skills seemingly in spite of nature. 

Reading began so recently in the evolutionary history of our species that we have no innate biological processes devoted specifically to reading. 

Fluent reading depends on a complex set of cognitive processes that must work together in perfect concert. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) and Rapid alternative stimulus (RAS) tasks provide insight into this system, acting as a microcosm of the processes involved in reading.