This study aims to compare auditory temporal processing and phonological processing across locations and age levels and to test the direct and indirect effects of auditory temporal and phonological processing on proficiency in Chinese character reading. We recruited 108 typically developing children -- 25 and 24 kindergarteners from Taiwan and…

This study developed and validated a Chinese name writing scale (CNWS) for evaluating early handwriting skills of kindergarten children. We then used the validated CNWS to examine the developmental characteristics of Chinese name writing skills among kindergarten children in Hong Kong in a cross-sectional study. CNWS was developed based on English…

To successfully pull a practical joke on someone, children need to understand that their victims do not know what they themselves know, be able to intentionally manipulate others' beliefs, and maintain a straight face to safeguard the integrity of the joke. This study examined the relationship between children's developing theory of mind (ToM),…

This study examined early development of cool and hot self-regulation and how they were related to Chinese preschoolers' early achievement. A total of 951 children (448 girls) aged three to five in Hong Kong participated in this study. Children's self-regulation was assessed with a battery of five tasks tapping either cool or hot self-regulation;…

In this longitudinal study, we assessed 88 Hong Kong Chinese typically developing kindergarteners' Chinese character reading accuracy four times with 6-month intervals over 1.5 years with the first testing point in the fall of the second year of kindergarten (K2), during which morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic…

Do learners of a second language (L2) need frequent contact with native speakers of that language in order to master its phonology? What if they hear audio recordings of native speakers and receive immediate corrective feedback about their perception? We used a randomized controlled experiment with 135 Chinese speakers (with English as their L2)…

This study examined how Chinese children acquire the untaught positional constraints of stroke patterns that are embedded in left-right structured and top-bottom structured characters. Using an orthographic regularity pattern elicitation paradigm, 536 Hong Kong Chinese children at different levels of reading (kindergarten, 2nd, and 5th grades)…

Play is a primary context for fostering young children's positive peer interactions. Through play, children develop the social, emotional, cognitive and language skills that contribute to the ability to establish effective relationships with peers. The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS) was first developed by Fantuzzo to assess the quality…

Background: Learning to read is very challenging for Hong Kong children who learn English as a second language (ESL), as they must acquire two very different writing systems, beginning at the age of three. Few studies have examined the role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels, oral language proficiency, and L1 tone awareness in L2…

In this study, we examined the intercorrelations among speech perception, metalinguistic (i.e., phonological and morphological) awareness, word reading, and vocabulary in a 1st language (L1) and a 2nd language (L2). Results from 3 age groups of Chinese-English bilingual children showed that speech perception was more predictive of reading and…

Two scales of mothers' mediation of their children's writing based on Aram and Levin (2001) were developed and tested in 67 mother-child Hong Kong Chinese dyads in three grade levels--second-year kindergarten, third-year kindergarten, and first grade. With children's ages, grades, and non-verbal IQs, as well as mothers' education levels…