Regardless of the unit(s) used in decoding, children must practice decoding until the process becomes automatic. This automaticity (Samuels and Dahl, 1973) level of skill in decoding implies more than simple accuracy in word recognition; additionally, it refers to a behavior that can be performed without attention. During the early stages of learning to read, considerable focal attention is given to decoding considerations. As long as the reader attends to decoding, he will be unable to adequately comprehend the message-for the processing of information into meaning also requires this focusing of the single channel capacity of focal attention.

When the reader has practiced beyond simple accuracy in word recognition, and has reached the stage where decoding occurs automatically without the services of focal attention, automaticity has been achieved. Attention can subsequently be directed toward the processing of meaning (conceptualizing) from the printed display. Whereas initially a child needs to scan the visual display, make visual discriminations, decode the print into articulatory programs, and finally conceptualize (focally attending to each successive step), with practice the reader learns to scan the visual display in the margin of attention, while focal attention is given to conceptualizing its content. Decoding is done preattentively (automatically) and, instead of a series of graphemes, or printed words, a concept is perceived.

Presumably what happens at the automaticity stage of development of reading skill is that, for instance, the eyes first fall on the left-hand side of the printed page at the start of the first sentence and store the visual information in the fixation in SIS. Next, while this information is being processed into internal articulatory programs, and then into conceptualizations in focal attention, the preattentive processes direct the eyes to the next fixation point, and the processing continues. By this approach, the eyes would stay ahead of the conceptualizing-but focal attention and hence our subjective experience would be at the conceptualizing stage. Phenomenologically, then, we would "directly" perceive the meaning in the printed message, just as we "directly" perceive the meaning of spoken messages.