Background: Visual-spatial attention is associated with reading development, but we do not know whether this is primarily driven by the deployment of goal-directed or stimulus-driven attention. Method: One hundred ninety-four Chinese-speaking first graders completed two visual search tasks, in which they searched for a target among a number of…

While the close relationship between the brain system for speech processing and reading development is well-documented in alphabetic languages, whether and how such a link exists in children in a language without systematic grapheme-phoneme correspondence has not been directly investigated. In the present study, we measured Chinese children's…

Background: Evidence shows that children's household contexts of economic pressure and home chaos may better represent children's daily home experiences than family socioeconomic status. Still, limited research has examined the impacts of household contexts on child developmental outcomes and their underlying mechanisms. Objective: This study…

The current study focused on the required Grade 4 reading textbooks published by Mainland China's People's Education Press. Using the construction-integration model (C-I; Kintsch in Psychol Rev 95:163-182, 1988; Discourse Process 39:125-112, 2005) as the theoretical framework, we analyzed the texts and activities in the textbooks on the following…

This study provides evidence connecting two aspects of visual-orthographic skills (orthographic awareness and delayed copying) to the common variance shared by Chinese word reading and arithmetic calculation, as well as in identifying positional knowledge of numbers as a potential mediator of these connections in Chinese primary school students (N…

Research Findings: This study investigated the bidirectional relations among paired associate learning (PAL), language-specific skills and Chinese word reading in kindergarten children from second year (K2) to third year (K3). We tested 204 children on four mapping conditions of PAL (i.e., visual-verbal, verbal-verbal, visual-visual, and…

We examined the developmental trajectories and cognitive predictors of first language Chinese reading, second language English reading, and mathematics skills in Hong Kong children in Grades 1-5. We used longitudinal data of 1,000 children (M[subscript age] = 7.59 years) assessed on phonological awareness, rapid naming, and morphological awareness…

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…

Word semantic knowledge (WSK) is crucial to the development of one's reading comprehension ability. A total of 608 students (208 poor readers in the experimental group and 200 poor readers in the control group one, and 200 typical readers in control group 2) from grade 4 participated in this study. Selected reading ability assessments were…

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with…

This research compared the contributions of lexical inferencing, decoding, and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language (ESL) enrolled in university bridging programs in the U.S. and Chinese-speaking university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China.…

The present study examines the visual attention span deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Twenty-five Cantonese-speaking Chinese dyslexic children (DD group) were compared with 25 chronological-age-matched (CA) controls and another 25 reading-level-matched (RL) controls on their performance in visual attention span, reading, and…

Although several studies have examined the role of home literacy environment (HLE) in learning to read in Western societies, little is known about the role of HLE in Chinese reading. In addition, the few studies in Chinese have not tested the possible effects of HLE on reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the…

Background: This study aims to empirically answer the question of whether the role of sub-reading skills changes depending on the test format (e.g., multiple-choice vs. open-ended reading questions). The test format effect also addresses the issue of test validity--whether the reading test properly elicits construct-relevant reading skills or…

This study investigated Chinese children's development of sensitivity to positional (orthographic), phonological, and semantic cues of radicals in encoding novel Chinese characters. A newly designed picture-novel character mapping task, along with nonverbal reasoning ability, vocabulary, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 198…