Word learning deficit among Chinese dyslexic children

The present study examined word learning difficulties in Chinese dyslexic children, readers of a nonalphabetic script. A total of 105 Hong Kong Chinese children were recruited and divided into three groups: Dyslexic (mean age 8;8), CA control (mean age 8;9), and RL control (mean age 6;11). They were given a word learning task and a familiar word writing task. It was found that the Dyslexic group performed less well than the RL group in learning irregular words over trials but not the regular ones. Error analyses showed that the Dyslexic group made more orthographic and word association errors but less intra-wordlist interference errors than the RL control group. The Dyslexic group also performed significantly less well than both control groups in writing familiar words (e.g. their own name). These findings suggest that Chinese dyslexic children have difficulty learning new words, especially irregular ones, and retaining overlearned words in long-term memory. We conclude that Chinese dyslexic children have a specific impairment in word learning like their alphabetic counterparts. © 2006 Cambridge University Press.published_or_final_versio

Screening for Chinese children with dyslexia in Hong Kong: The use of the teachers' behaviour checklist

Primary school teachers rated the frequency of occurrence of 65 reading-related behavioural characteristics in a sample of 251 Grade 1 to Grade 6 Chinese school children in Hong Kong. These behavioural characteristics were in the areas of general performance, reading, dictation, writing, mathematics, language, memory, concentration, sequential ability, motor co-ordination, spatial orientation, and social/emotional adjustment. Of these 12 areas, 10 yielded scale scores that could distinguish children with dyslexia from those without dyslexia, identified on the basis of their performance in five domains of literacy and cognitive skills. Using a summary score derived from the 10 relevant scales, an optimal cut-off score was suggested to arrive at a balance between high sensitivity and an acceptable rate of false positives in screening for children with dyslexia. The need for cross-replication in screening children with dyslexia using the behaviour checklist with different samples of school students is emphasised.published_or_final_versio

Estimating incidence of developmental dyslexia in Hong Kong: What differences do different criteria make?

Based on the data of a school-referred sample of Cantonese-speaking Chinese children who met the Hong Kong criterion of dyslexia, we estimated for developmental dyslexia of Chinese children aged between 6 and 10½ in Hong Kong an incidence rate of 0.66% and a gender ratio of 3.29 boys to 1 girl over a four-year period. We also explored the differences in estimates based on this Hong Kong criterion that emphasizes cognitive markers with more conventional discrepancy-based criteria. In view of the possible biases in self-selection and underreporting in the data of the school-referred sample, we compared the figures with those derived from the sample of the normative study of the Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing, which yielded an estimate of 9.7% in prevalence rate and boy-girl gender ratio of 2 to 1 over a one-year period. The differences in estimates based on the two samples and implications of the findings are discussed in light of the limitations of the study.postprin

Behavioral characteristics of chinese adolescents with dyslexia: The use of teachers' behavior checklist in Hong Kong

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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. © 2010 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 21 Feb 201

The core components of reading instruction in Chinese

The present study aimed at identifying core components of reading instruction in Chinese within the framework of the tiered intervention model. A curriculum with four teaching components of cognitive-linguistic skills was implemented in a Program school for 3 years since Grade 1. The findings showed that the Tier 1 intervention was effective in enhancing the literacy and cognitive-linguistic skills of children in the Program school. The positive effects were maintained at the end of Grade 2. Progress in both word-level and text-level cognitive-linguistic skills predicted significantly progress in reading comprehension. Based on the present findings, the four core reading components in Chinese were proposed-oral language, morphological awareness, orthographic skills, and syntactic skills. Comparing the Big Five in English and the four core components in Chinese reflects different cognitive demands for reading diverse orthographies. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.postprin

Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children's age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.postprin

Exercise alters and beta-alanine combined with exercise augments histidyl dipeptide levels and scavenges lipid peroxidation products in human skeletal muscle

Title on article: Exercise alters and β-alanine combined with exercise augments histidyl dipeptide levels and scavenges lipid peroxidation products in human skeletal muscl

Selective-logging and oil palm: Multitaxon impacts, biodiversity indicators, and trade-offs for conservation planning

Strong global demand for tropical timber and agricultural products has driven large-scale logging and subsequent conversion of tropical forests. Given that the majority of tropical landscapes have been or will likely be logged, the protection of biodiversity within tropical forests thus depends on whether species can persist in these economically exploited lands, and if species cannot persist, whether we can protect enough primary forest from logging and conversion. However, our knowledge of the impact of logging and conversion on biodiversity is limited to a few taxa, often sampled in different locations with complex land-use histories, hampering attempts to plan cost-effective conservation strategies and to draw conclusions across taxa. Spanning a land-use gradient of primary forest, once- and twice-logged forests, and oil palm plantations, we used traditional sampling and DNA metabarcoding to compile an extensive data set in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo for nine vertebrate and invertebrate taxa to quantify the biological impacts of logging and oil palm, develop cost-effective methods of protecting biodiversity, and examine whether there is congruence in response among taxa. Logged forests retained high species richness, including, on average, 70% of species found in primary forest. In contrast, conversion to oil palm dramatically reduces species richness, with significantly fewer primary-forest species than found on logged forest transects for seven taxa.Using a systematic conservation planning analysis, we show that efficient protection of primary-forest species is achieved with land portfolios that include a large proportion of logged-forest plots. Protecting logged forests is thus a cost-effective method of protecting an ecologically and taxonomically diverse range of species, particularly when conservation budgets are limited. Six indicator groups (birds, leaf-litter ants, beetles, aerial hymenopterans, flies, and true bugs) proved to be consistently good predictors of the response of the other taxa to logging and oil palm. Our results confidently establish the high conservation value of logged forests and the low value of oil palm. Cross-taxon congruence in responses to disturbance also suggests that the practice of focusing on key indicator taxa yields important information of general biodiversity in studies of logging and oil palm

Analysis of bolted flanged panel joint for GRP sectional tanks

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