The Heterogeneity of Reading-Related Difficulties in Chinese

The present chapter reviews cognitive-linguistic skills which are associated with various reading-related difficulties in Chinese. Research findings have showed that rapid naming and orthographic deficits are the unique marker deficits of Chinese developmental dyslexia. However, studies have indicated overlapping and dissociative deficits in dyslexia and spelling difficulties. Findings on dissociation between word reading and spelling difficulties suggest that weaknesses in orthographic processing may specifically cause difficulties in Chinese word spelling. Deficits in rapid naming are more associated with word reading fluency than reading accuracy. Beyond word level processing, there are children who encounter difficulties in reading comprehension even with adequate decoding skills. This group of specific poor comprehenders was found to be weak in some discourse-level skills, like comprehension monitoring and inferencing. Knowledge of these findings will inform us about effective identification of and intervention for children with difficulties in one or a combination of several reading-related difficulties in Chinese

Association of the DYX1C1 Gene with Chinese Literacy in a Healthy Chinese Population

DYX1C1, the first dyslexia candidate gene, has been associated with developmental dyslexia in different populations, but its influence on reading abilities in the general population is less well known. Copy number variants (CNVs) have been implicated in neurodevelopmental and childhood-onset disorders involving cognitive development in previous studies. In this report, we investigated the extent to which genomic CNVs for the SNP previously linked to dyslexia, -3G/A (rs3743205) in the gene DYX1C1, contribute to Chinese and English literacy in the general population in a Chinese cohort, and whether these processes, in turn, are influenced by environmental factors, such as family income, parents’ education, and IQ. Our findings suggest that the logR ratio (which is a way to detect CNVs) of a previously reported dyslexia-related SNP, -3G/A (rs3743205) is significantly associated with Chinese literacy in a cohort of Chinese children with normal reading abilities

Prevalence and heritability of handedness in a Hong Kong Chinese twin and singleton sample

Funding: Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (CUHK8/CRF/13G & C4054-17WF), by an internal grant entitled “Reading Development in Chinese and in English: Genetics and Neuroscience Correlates”(4930703) from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CM is the PI on both grants), by a Hong Kong: Scotland Collaborative Research Partnership award from the Hong Kong Grants Council (CMis the PI for the Hong Kong side) and the Scottish Funding Council (SP is the PI for the Scotland side). It was additionally funded by an International Exchange Kan Tongo Po Visiting Fellowship to SP. SP is a Royal Society University Research Fellow.Background Left-handedness prevalence has been consistently reported at around 10% with heritability estimates at around 25%. Higher left-handedness prevalence has been reported in males and in twins. Lower prevalence has been reported in Asia, but it remains unclear whether this is due to biological or cultural factors. Most studies are based on samples with European ethnicities and using the preferred hand for writing as key assessment. Here, we investigated handedness in a sample of Chinese school children in Hong Kong, including 426 singletons and 205 pairs of twins, using both the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and Pegboard Task. Results Based on a binary definition of writing hand, we found a higher prevalence of left-handedness (8%) than what was previously reported in Asian datasets. We found no evidence of increased left-handedness in twins, but our results were in line with previous findings showing that males have a higher tendency to be left-handed than females. Heritability was similar for both hand preference (21%) and laterality indexes (22%). However, these two handedness measures present only a moderate correlation (.42) and appear to be underpinned by different genetic factors. Conclusion In summary, we report new reference data for an ethnic group usually underrepresented in the literature. Our heritability analysis supports the idea that different measures will capture different components of handedness and, as a consequence, datasets assessed with heterogeneous criteria are not easily combined or compared.PreprintPublisher PDFPeer reviewe

Prevalence and heritability of handedness in a Chinese twin and singleton sample

Left-Handedness prevalence has been consistently reported at around 10% with heritability estimates at around 25%. Lower prevalence has been reported in Asia, but it remains unclear whether this is due to biological or cultural factors. Higher left-handedness prevalence has been reported in males and in twins. Most studies are based on samples with European ethnicities and using the preferred hand for writing as the key assessment. Here, we investigated Chinese singletons (N=425) and twins (N = 205 pairs) using both the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory and Pegboard Task, the latter leading to a continuous measure of handedness (PegQ). We found a higher prevalence of non-right handedness (8%) than what was previously reported in Asian datasets and no evidence of increased left-handedness in twins. We also found some evidence that males have a higher tendency to be left-handed than females. Heritability was similar for both hand preference (21%) and PegQ (22%). However, these two handedness measures present only a moderate correlation (.42) and appear to be underpinned by different genetic factors. In summary, we report new reference data for an ethnic group usually underrepresented in the literature. Our heritability analysis supports the idea that different measures will capture different components of handedness and, as a consequence, comparisons of datasets assessed with heterogeneous criteria are not easily combined or compared.PreprintNon peer reviewe

Variability in Asian parents’ English and mathematics skills: A family-based study

What explains parental English word reading and mathematics performance? The present study examined whether parent-, family-, and child-related variables explain parents’ English word reading and mathematics performances among two groups of Asian parents. The data were collected from 152 Hong Kong and 280 Cebu City (Philippines) parents who learn English as a second language. The academic performances of their children (Hong Kong: Mean age = 8.72 years; Cebu City; Mean age = 6.59 years) were also measured. Regression analysis results suggested that, across both groups, parents with higher education levels tended to perform better in English word reading. In addition, in Hong Kong, but not the Philippines, family income was a unique correlate of parental English word reading performance, whereas in the Philippines, but not Hong Kong, the parent’s own mathematics skill and the child’s own English word reading skill were also uniquely associated with parental English performance. Across both groups, parents’ mathematics skills were associated with better literacy skills. In addition, in Hong Kong, more positive attitudes toward mathematics were additionally predictive of better mathematics performance, as were children’s own mathematics performances. In the Philippines only, mothers tended to be poorer in mathematics than fathers. Such results underscore the complexity of family related literacy and mathematics, including family status and intergenerational effects

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Chinese Language and Reading Abilities

This study investigated the etiology of individual differences in Chinese language and reading skills in 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years (228 pairs of monozygotic twins and 84 pairs of dizygotic twins; 166 male pairs and 146 female pairs). Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices. All analyses controlled for the effects of age. There were moderate to substantial genetic influences on word reading, tone awareness, phonological memory, morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (estimates ranged from .42 to .73), while shared environment exerted moderate to strong effects on receptive vocabulary, syllable and rhyme awareness and orthographic skills (estimates ranged from .35 to .63). Results were largely unchanged when scores were adjusted for nonverbal reasoning as well as age. Findings of this study are mostly similar to those found for English, a language with very different characteristics, and suggest the universality of genetic and environmental influences across languages

The relevance of visual & phonological abilities for Chinese beginningreaders

abstractpublished_or_final_versiontocEducational PsychologyMasterMaster of Social Science