Chinese-English dual language learners (Chinese DLLs) are a growing population in the US. Existing studies of preschool-aged Chinese DLLs mostly focused on single-word vocabulary and rarely explored other skills important for school readiness. In the current study, we examined Chinese DLLs' development of receptive vocabulary and comprehension of…

Purpose: Gesture delay in autistic infants and toddlers has been widely reported. The developmental trajectory of gesture production during early childhood is understudied. Thus, little is known about the possible changes of gesture production over time. The present study aimed to document the development of gesture production in autistic children…

The goal of this study was to examine the cross-lagged relations between vocabulary and word reading in children learning two scripts at the same time (pinyin and Chinese). One hundred fifty-nine third-year kindergarten Chinese children (70 girls and 89 boys; mean age = 72.70 months) were assessed on measures of nonverbal IQ, phonological…

Holistic processing has been identified as an expertise marker of face and object recognition. By contrast, reduced holistic processing is purportedly an expertise marker in recognising orthographic characters in Chinese. Does holistic processing increase or decrease in expertise development? Is orthographic recognition a domain-specific exception…

Dialogic reading (DR) is an interactive reading approach that enhances the language development of children. This study aims to extend DR to the shared reading context involving children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and their older siblings and to examine the effects of DR with parents/siblings on the language development…

The present study aimed to examine the potential importance of orthographic flexibility for Chinese reading acquisition. Orthographic flexibility is a novel concept that represents the ability to manage and switch attention among multiple aspects of orthographic information. A total of 92 Chinese kindergarten children at age 6 were assessed on…

This paper highlights the complex relations between public and private spaces with regard to young children's bilingual learning, and the importance of developing a pedagogy that allows for the interaction of learning across the two spaces. It uses findings from a qualitative study to illustrate nuanced (mis)alignments between dominant language…

Positive associations have been found between executive function (EF) and language skills in young children. However, the relations between specific components of EF and language are unclear. This study examined these relations among young children in three Asian countries. A series of EF and language tasks was administered to 700 children (350…

The study examined how children's self-regulation skills measured by the strengths and weaknesses of ADHD symptoms and normal behavior rating are associated with story comprehension and how verbal engagement and e-book discussion prompts moderate this relation. Children aged 3-7 (N = 111, 50% female, Chinese as first language) read an interactive…

This study examined the bidirectionality between kindergarten children's executive functioning (EF) and word reading across two time points. Participants were 523 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking children (mean age at Time 2 = 64.59 months; 52.9% male) and their parents. At Time 1, children were administered the measures of EF skills: inhibitory…

Background: Recent research suggests that diverse types of copying, including pure copying, copying fluency and delayed copying, contributed to children's spelling of Chinese characters and English words but not to word recognition. This study examined the relations of pure copying, copying fluency and delayed copying to beginning word reading and…

This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of verbal and visuospatial memory in Chinese reading comprehension. One hundred twenty-eight Cantonese-speaking children participated in the study at the end of their 3rd year of kindergarten in Hong Kong. Both verbal and visuospatial memory were found to be significantly associated with…

Testing of previously studied information potentiates subsequent learning of new information, a phenomenon referred to as the "forward testing effect" (FTE). The current study aimed to investigate the developmental trajectory of the FTE and whether the reset-of-encoding process contributes to the FTE. Younger children, older children,…

The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) on cognitive-linguistic skills, word reading and writing in children from low-SES backgrounds. This study examines differences in cognitive-linguistic skills and word…

Background: Research has shown that paired associate learning (PAL) plays an important role in children's word reading across different languages. However, little is known about the construct of PAL and its relationship with word reading in Chinese children. Methods: A total of 204 second-year kindergarten children from Mainland China were…