Lexical tone awareness in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

This study examined the extent and nature of lexical tone deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Twenty Cantonese-speaking Chinese dyslexic children (mean age 8;11) were compared to twenty average readers of the same age (CA control group, mean age 8;11), and another twenty younger average readers of the same word reading level (RL control group, mean age 7;4) on different measures of lexical tone awareness, rhyme awareness and visual-verbal paired-associate learning. Results showed that the Chinese dyslexic children performed significantly worse than the CA but not the RL control groups in nearly all the lexical tone and rhyme awareness measures. Analyses of individual performance demonstrated that over one-third of the dyslexic children showed a deficit in some aspects of tone awareness. Tone discrimination and tone production were found to correlate significantly with Chinese word reading. These findings confirm that Chinese dyslexic children show weaknesses in tone awareness.published_or_final_versio

Predictors of beginning reading in Chinese and English: A 2-year longitudinal study of Chinese kindergartners

Ninety Chinese children were tested once at age 4 and again 22 months later on phonological-processing and other reading skills. Chinese phonological-processing skills alone modestly predicted Chinese character recognition, and English letter-name knowledge uniquely predicted reading of both Chinese and English 2 years later. Furthermore, concurrently measured phonological-processing skills in Chinese, but not English, accounted for unique variance in both English and Chinese word recognition. English invented spelling was strongly associated with reading in English only, and orthographic knowledge significantly accounted for unique variance in Chinese reading only. Results suggest both universal and specific characteristics of the development of English word and Chinese character recognition among young native Chinese speakers learning to read English as a second language. Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.published_or_final_versio

The cognitive profile of Chinese children with mathematics difficulties

This study examined how four domain-specific skills (arithmetic procedural skills, number fact retrieval, place value concept, and number sense) and two domain-general processing skills (working memory and processing speed) may account for Chinese children's mathematics learning difficulties. Children with mathematics difficulties (MD) of two age groups (7-8 and 9-11. years) were compared with age-matched typically achieving children. For both age groups, children with MD performed significantly worse than their age-matched controls on all of the domain-specific and domain-general measures. Further analyses revealed that the MD children with literacy difficulties (MD/RD group) performed the worst on all of the measures, whereas the MD-only group was significantly outperformed by the controls on the four domain-specific measures and verbal working memory. Stepwise discriminant analyses showed that both number fact retrieval and place value concept were significant factors differentiating the MD and non-MD children. To conclude, deficits in domain-specific skills, especially those of number fact retrieval and place value understanding, characterize the profile of Chinese children with MD. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.postprin

Executive functioning and delinquent behavior in Chinese juvenile delinquent with comorbid developmental reading disability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

This journal suppl. entitled: IACAPAP 2012 - 20th World Congress – Paris. Brain, Mind and Developmentpostprin

Transfer of reading-related cognitive skills in learning to read Chinese (L1) and English (L2) among Chinese elementary school children

This study investigated transfer of reading-related cognitive skills between learning to read Chinese (L1) and English (L2) among Chinese children in Hong Kong. Fifty-three Grade 2 students were tested on word reading, phonological, orthographic and rapid naming skills in Chinese (L1) and English (L2). The major findings were: (a) significant correlations between Chinese and English measures in phonological awareness and rapid naming, but not in orthographic skills; (b) significant unique contribution of Chinese and English rapid naming skills and English rhyme awareness for predicting Chinese word reading after controlling for all the Chinese and English cognitive measures; (c) significant unique contribution of English phonological skills and Chinese orthographic skills (a negative one) for predicting English word reading after controlling for all the English and Chinese cognitive measures; and (d) significant unique contribution of Chinese rhyme awareness for predicting English phonemic awareness. These findings provide initial evidence that developing reading-related cognitive skills in English may have facilitative effects on Chinese word reading development. They also suggest that Chinese orthographic skills or tactics may not be helpful for learning to read English words among ESL learners; and that Chinese rhyme awareness facilitates the development of English phonemic awareness which is an essential skill predicting ESL learning. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.postprin

Should dyslexic children stop copying? Exploring the relationship between word reading, copying and dictation?

Interactive Poste

Characterizing the overlap between SLI and dyslexia in Chinese: The role of phonology and beyond

This study examined the overlap of dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) in Cantonese-Chinese-speaking children. Thirty children with a prior diagnosis of SLI and 9 normal controls, aged between 6;0 and 11;3, participated. The children with SLI were tested for language impairment and dyslexia. Seven retained a diagnosis of SLI but were dyslexia-free (SLI-only), 13 received a comorbid diagnosis of dyslexia (SLI-D), and SLI had become history (SLI-H) in the other 10 children with no co-morbid diagnoses of dyslexia. The SLI-only group did worse on textual comprehension, but better on left-right reversal (an orthographic skill), than the SLI-D group. The SLI-only and the SLI-D group shared the same range of cognitive deficits relative to age norms and showed no difference in phonological processing. The SLI-D group did worse than the normal group on phonological representation, and both the SLI-only and the SLI-D group had difficulties with morphological awareness. © 2010 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading.postprin

Phonological representations and early literacy in Chinese

Phonological processing skills predict early reading development, but what underlies developing phonological processing skills? Phonological representations of 140 native Cantonese-speaking Chinese children (age 4–10) were assessed with speech gating, mispronunciation detection, and nonword repetition tasks; their nonverbal IQ, reading, and phonological processing were assessed with standard tests. Results indicated that even without explicit script-sound correspondence at the phonemic level in Chinese orthography, young Chinese speakers developed representations segmented at this level, and such representations were more fine-grained for older children. Further, the quality of kindergarteners’ phonological representations (specified by sensitivity to mispronunciation in lexical judgment) significantly predicted their emergent reading abilities, and this relation was fully mediated by phonological processing skills, with rapid naming showing the strongest mediation effect. Such mediation was no longer found with the primary-school sample, suggesting plausible developmental changes in the relations between phonological representations, phonological processing, and reading during early reading development.postprin

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

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

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