Lower-Elementary Level School Pupils' Developmental Trajectories of Chinese Verbal Vocabulary Knowledge and Influential Factors

149 elementary school pupils were selected as the subjects for this study, to whom five tracking assessments of their verbal vocabulary knowledge were given over a period of three years. In addition, a latent variable growth model was adopted to explore grades 1-3 elementary school pupil’s developmental trajectory for verbal Chinese vocabulary knowledge. The phonological awareness, homomorphic morpheme awareness, compound morpheme awareness and family socioeconomic status (SES) on the students’ verbal vocabulary knowledge were also investigated. The ndings are: 1, grades 1-3 elementary school pupils verbal Chinese vocabulary knowledge developmental trajectory shows a curvilinear form, of which linear development is trended in the first two years, and as of the third year the developmental rate doubles the previous two years, whereas individual di erences are remarkable in both the initial level and the growth rate; 2, awareness of phonetics, homomorphic morphemes and complex morphemes as well as the family socioeconomic status can be referred to for a positive forecast of the students’ initial level of verbal vocabulary knowledge; 3, only the awareness of homomorphic morphemes and the family socioeconomic status can be applied to a positive prediction of the students’ verbal vocabulary knowledge growth rate.

The Relationship between SES and Reading Comprehension in Chinese: A Mediation Model

An increasing body of research provides evidence that socioeconomic status (SES) was significantly related to children’s reading development; however, the psychological mechanism underlying the association between them remained an open question. The present study is designed to test the hypothesized three-path effect of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness as mediators between SES and sentence reading comprehension in Chinese first-graders. Results of mediation model showed that SES exerted its effect on sentence reading comprehension through the indirect path via the simple mediating effect of morphological awareness and the three-path mediating effect of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness. The findings highlight a previously unidentified mechanism of the relationship between SES and reading comprehension in Chinese young children

Teaching Semantic Radicals Facilitates Inferring New Character Meaning in Sentence Reading for Nonnative Chinese Speakers

This study investigates the effects of teaching semantic radicals in inferring the meanings of unfamiliar characters among nonnative Chinese speakers. A total of 54 undergraduates majoring in Chinese Language from a university in Hanoi, Vietnam, who had 1 year of learning experience in Chinese were assigned to two experimental groups that received instructional intervention, called “old-for-new” semantic radical teaching, through two counterbalanced sets of semantic radicals, with one control group. All of the students completed pre- and post-tests of a sentence cloze task where they were required to choose an appropriate character that fit the sentence context among four options. The four options shared the same phonetic radicals but had different semantic radicals. The results showed that the pre-test and post-test score increases were significant for the experimental groups, but not for the control group. Most importantly, the experimental groups successfully transferred the semantic radical strategy to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar characters containing semantic radicals that had not been taught. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of teaching semantic radicals for lexical inference in sentence reading for nonnative speakers, and highlight the ability of transfer learning to acquire semantic categories of sub-lexical units (semantic radicals) in Chinese characters among foreign language learners

The relationship between challenge-hindrance stressors and innovative behavior among medical postgraduates in China: the mediation role of academic engagement and the moderating effect of relaxation

This study investigated the relationship between challenge-hindrance stressors and innovative behavior of medical postgraduates in China, examining the mediating role of academic engagement and the moderating effect of relaxation. Drawing from a sample of 437 medical postgraduates from three Chinese universities, our findings revealed that challenge stressors positively correlated with innovative behavior, while the direct relationship between hindrance stressors and innovative behavior was not statistically significant. Furthermore, academic engagement mediated the relationship between two types of stressors and innovative behavior. Challenge stressors enhanced academic engagement, which in turn fostered innovative behavior. Conversely, hindrance stressors were found to diminish academic engagement, which in turn indirectly limited innovative behavior. Additionally, relaxation was identified as a moderating factor that helped mitigate the negative effects of hindrance stressors on academic engagement and indirectly on innovative behavior. These results suggested that academic engagement as a mechanism played a pivotal role in determining how different stressors influenced innovative behavior, underscoring the need for stress management, particularly through relaxation techniques, to maintain high levels of academic engagement and innovative behavior. This study offers practical insights for medical education policymakers and educators in China, emphasizing the importance of balancing stressors and incorporating relaxation practices to enhance the innovative capabilities of medical postgraduates in demanding academic environments

Comparative analysis of Cd-responsive maize and rice transcriptomes highlights Cd co-modulated orthologs

Abstract Background Metal tolerance is often an integrative result of metal uptake and distribution, which are fine-tuned by a network of signaling cascades and metal transporters. Thus, with the goal of advancing the molecular understanding of such metal homeostatic mechanisms, comparative RNAseq-based transcriptome analysis was conducted to dissect differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in maize roots exposed to cadmium (Cd) stress. Results To unveil conserved Cd-responsive genes in cereal plants, the obtained 5166 maize DEGs were compared with 2567 Cd-regulated orthologs in rice roots, and this comparison generated 880 universal Cd-responsive orthologs groups composed of 1074 maize DEGs and 981 rice counterparts. More importantly, most of the orthologous DEGs showed coordinated expression pattern between Cd-treated maize and rice, and these include one large orthologs group of pleiotropic drug resistance (PDR)-type ABC transporters, two clusters of amino acid transporters, and 3 blocks of multidrug and toxic compound extrusion (MATE) efflux family transporters, and 3 clusters of heavy metal-associated domain (HMAD) isoprenylated plant proteins (HIPPs), as well as all 4 groups of zinc/iron regulated transporter protein (ZIPs). Additionally, several blocks of tandem maize paralogs, such as germin-like proteins (GLPs), phenylalanine ammonia-lyases (PALs) and several enzymes involved in JA biosynthesis, displayed consistent co-expression pattern under Cd stress. Out of the 1074 maize DEGs, approximately 30 maize Cd-responsive genes such as ZmHIPP27, stress-responsive NAC transcription factor (ZmSNAC1) and 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase (NCED, vp14) were also common stress-responsive genes reported to be uniformly regulated by multiple abiotic stresses. Moreover, the aforementioned three promising Cd-upregulated genes with rice counterparts were identified to be novel Cd-responsive genes in maize. Meanwhile, one maize glutamate decarboxylase (ZmGAD1) with Cd co-modulated rice ortholog was selected for further analysis of Cd tolerance via heterologous expression, and the results suggest that ZmGAD1 can confer Cd tolerance in yeast and tobacco leaves. Conclusions These novel findings revealed the conserved function of Cd-responsive orthologs and paralogs, which would be valuable for elucidating the genetic basis of the plant response to Cd stress and unraveling Cd tolerance genes

Correction to: M2 macrophage-derived exosomal microRNAs inhibit cell migration and invasion in gliomas through PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article

Le Courrier

12 février 18391839/02/12 (N43)