Theories explaining skilled and disordered reading are based on observations about the effects of psycholinguistic variables on word naming and lexical decision performance. My interest is in reading processes in adolescents and adults who, in the absence of diagnosed organic difficulties, still struggle to attain skilled reading. In thinking about these learners, knowledge of which predictors inhibit or facilitate strong performance, and their relative importance with each other, may shape teaching practices or resources, so it's important that we have robust estimates upon which to base teaching decisions. As a baseline from which to measure this group's performance in future studies, I embarked upon a meta-analysis of the psycholinguistic research literature that studies contrasting groups and their performance in word naming and lexical decision tasks