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Most Chinese characters comprise radicals that are embedded in a specific structure (e.g., left-right structure like [Chinese characters omitted], or top-bottom structure like [Chinese characters omitted]). We investigated the representations of word-form units (i.e., radicals) in planning Chinese handwritten production. Adopting the picture-word interference paradigm (Experiment 1, N = 29), we manipulated picture names and their corresponding distractors to share one radical. Radicals embedded in the same character structure as the target significantly shortened the participants' writing latency, no matter whether the radicals appeared at the same or a different position in the distractor. This finding suggests that radicals appearing at different positions in characters with the same structure may share the same representations in planning Chinese written word production. On the other hand, when the shared radical appeared in the distractor that possessed a different structure than the target, a non-significant facilitation trend was observed. Experiment 2 adopted the form-preparation paradigm and obtained a similar non-significant trend of facilitation, in a larger sample (N = 53). Radicals embedded in different character structures might be represented as distinct units among (a proportion of) Chinese writers, suggesting the important role of character structure in planning Chinese handwritten production. The potential influence of language-specific features on the representations of word-form units should be taken into account when building word production models. Practical implications for literacy instruction are also discussed.

Previous work has predominantly focused on word reading in studying literacy difficulties; very little work has focused on spelling difficulty instead. The present study adopted spelling (dictation) as the criterion to classify poor literacy skills in Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual children. We examined the cognitive-linguistic skills profiles across four groups of children with different spelling abilities. Based on performances on Chinese and English dictation (criterion = below 25% in a larger sample), four groups were identified, 21 poor spellers of Chinese (PC), 18 poor spellers of English (PE), 27 poor spellers of both languages (PB), and 30 good spellers of both scripts (GB). Measures on language-specific tests of cognitive-linguistic skills (phonological awareness, lexical decision, morphological awareness, rapid naming, and delayed copying) were included to compare the degree of deficit exhibited by each group. With age, grade, and non-verbal intelligence controlled, one-way ANCOVA results revealed that, compared to GB, PC manifested significant deficits in Chinese-delayed copying but scored similarly on all English cognitive-linguistic skills. PE and PB showed significant deficits in Chinese and English phonological awareness compared to PC; they were significantly weaker in English-delayed copying, morphological awareness, and rapid naming (RAN). The PB group was significantly slower in both Chinese and English RAN compared to GB. Findings highlight the critical role of delayed copying in distinguishing poor spellers in both Chinese and English, the importance of phonological awareness for spelling in English but not in Chinese, and the role of automaticity in bilingual spelling difficulties.

The script relativity hypothesis proposes that the scripts we read and write affect our cognition. The current study tested this hypothesis by comparing Chinese and English cognitive-linguistic skills and three cognitive abilities, including verbal working memory capacity, nonverbal IQ, and arithmetic calculation, across groups of children with different Chinese and English word reading performances. Using the untimed word reading performances as the criterion, four groups of children were identified from a sample of 662 Hong Kong grade 1 Chinse children, including 49 children who were "good" at both Chinese and English word reading (the GB group), 30 children who were "poor" in Chinese word reading only (the PC group), 40 children who were "poor" in English word reading only (the PE group), and 65 children who were "poor" in both (the PB group). Significant group differences were found on almost all the cognitive-linguistic skills, including phonological awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and rapid digit naming, and the three cognitive abilities, with the GB group performing the best and the PB group performing the most poorly, suggesting a general positive association between script and cognition. Pairwise comparisons showed that the PC group performed better than the PE group in the English cognitive-linguistic tasks and the PE group performed better than the PC group in the Chinese cognitive-linguistic tasks, as expected. More importantly, the PC group showed poorer arithmetic calculation performance when compared to the PE group, suggesting a stronger association between Chinese word reading and arithmetic calculation.

This study investigated the impact of Chinese dyslexia subtypes on English literacy skills (i.e., reading fluency and dictation) in Hong Kong children. Eighty-four Cantonese-speaking children officially diagnosed with dyslexia (M[subscript age] = 103 months) and 48 age-matched typically developing (TD) children were tested. Cluster analysis with performances on Chinese syllable awareness (CSA), Chinese phonemic awareness (CPA), Chinese phonological memory (CPM), Chinese orthographic awareness (COA), and matrix reasoning (MR) yielded three cognitive subtypes: the phonological deficit (PD) subtype, the orthographic deficit (OD) subtype, and the global deficit (GD) subtype. After controlling for English language experience, age, and gender, all three dyslexia subtype groups performed significantly worse in English word reading fluency and dictation than the TD children. In addition, the PD group performed worse in English PA; the OD group performed worse in English OA; and the GD group performed worse in all English skills except English PM. We compared the level of impairment in literacy between languages and dyslexia subtypes. In word reading fluency, all subtype groups experienced less impairment in English than Chinese, while the OD group showed the largest English advantage. In dictation, only the OD group showed a significant language effect favoring English. The findings suggest that different subtypes of Chinese dyslexia bear different risks for difficulties in English literacy.

A form-preparation task in the language production field was adopted to examine output phonological representations in Chinese dyslexia and their susceptibility to training. Forty-one Chinese children with dyslexia (7-11 years old) and 36 chronological age controls completed this task. The controls demonstrated a marginally significant syllable facilitation effect (d = -0.13), indicating their use of syllable-sized phonological representations during speech production, while the group with dyslexia showed a significantly different pattern (d = 0.04), opposite to the direction of a facilitation effect. The children with dyslexia were then randomly assigned to either metalinguistic training (N = 22) or working memory training (N = 19). Only the metalinguistic training subgroup demonstrated a significant syllable facilitation effect afterward (metalinguistic: d = -0.13; working memory: d = -0.01). The results suggest the presence of a phonological representation deficit at the syllable level in Chinese dyslexia and its possible remediation by metalinguistic training. Such a phonological deficit in readers of a logographic script strongly supports the impaired phonological representation view of developmental dyslexia. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/zT2Be0xMkh0.

Research on what neural mechanisms facilitate word reading development in non-alphabetic scripts is relatively rare. The present study was among the first to adopt a multivariate pattern classification analysis to decode electroencephalographic signals recorded for primary school children (N = 236) while performing a Chinese character decision task. Chinese is an ideal script for studying the relationship between neural discriminability (i.e., decodability) of the orthography and behavioral word reading skills since the mapping from orthography to phonology is relatively arbitrary in Chinese. This was also among the first empirical attempts to examine the extent to which decoding performance can predict current and subsequent word reading skills using a longitudinal design. Results showed that neural activation patterns of real characters can be distinguished from activation patterns for pseudo-characters, non-characters, and random stroke combinations in both younger and older children. Topography of the transformed classifier weights revealed two distinct cognitive sub-processes underlying single character recognition, but temporal generalization analysis suggested common neural mechanisms between the distinct cognitive sub-processes. Suggestive evidence from correlational and hierarchical regression analyses showed that decoding performance, assessed on average 2 months before the year 2 behavioral testing, predicted both year 1 word reading performance and the development of word reading fluency over the year. Results demonstrate that decoding performance, one indicator of how the neural system is functionally organized in processing characters and character-like stimuli, can serve as a useful neural marker in predicting current word reading skills and the capacity to learn to read.

Adaptation refers to the decreased neural response that occurs after repeated exposure to a stimulus. While many electroencephalogram (EEG) studies have investigated adaptation by using either single or multiple repetitions, the adaptation patterns under controlled expectations manifested in the two main auditory components, N1 and P2, are still largely unknown. Additionally, although multiple repetitions are commonly used in mismatch negativity (MMN) experiments, it is unclear how adaptation at different time windows contributes to this phenomenon. In this study, we conducted an EEG experiment with 37 healthy adults using a random stimulus arrangement and extended tone sequences to control expectations. We tracked the amplitudes of the N1 and P2 components across the first 10 tones to examine adaptation patterns. Our findings revealed an L‐shaped adaptation pattern characterised by a significant decrease in N1 amplitude after the first repetition (N1 initial adaptation), followed by a continuous, linear increase in P2 amplitude after the first repetition (P2 subsequent adaptation), possibly indicating model adjustment. Regression analysis demonstrated that the peak amplitudes of both the N1 initial adaptation and the P2 subsequent adaptation significantly accounted for variance in MMN amplitude. These results suggest distinct adaptation patterns for multiple repetitions across different components and indicate that the MMN reflects a combination of two processes: the initial adaptation in the N1 and a continuous model adjustment effect in the P2. Understanding these processes separately could have implications for models of cognitive processing and clinical disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effect of character complexity on early Chinese literacy (word reading and writing). We also investigated whether cognitive skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) could moderate the influence of character complexity on literacy outcomes. Our pre-registered study included a sample of 342 Cantonese – speaking Hong Kong Chinese children (162 males, 180 females, mean age = 7.32, SD = 0.87) from Grade 1 to Grade 3. We used a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) to estimate the main effect of complexity on word recognition and dictation as well as interaction effects with each of the three cognitive skills. Age and nonverbal IQ were also included as controls. Character complexity had a slightly curvilinear but consistently negative association with word reading, with odds ratios ranging from.62 to.71 per 10% increase in complexity. RAN and morphological awareness buffered the negative influence of character complexity. For writing to dictation, character complexity was more curvilinear, but character complexity and the interactions between cognitive skills and character complexity were not significant. Complex visual input can be a barrier to early reading development in Chinese, and fostering morphological awareness may help mitigate this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During reading acquisition children learn to recognize orthographic stimuli and link them to phonology and semantics. The present study investigated neurocognitive processes of learning to read after one year of schooling. We aimed to elucidate the cognitive processes underlying neural tuning for print that has been shown to play an important role for reading and dyslexia. A 128-channel EEG was recorded while 68 (Swiss-)German monolingual first grade children (mean age: 7.6) performed a one-back task with different types of letter and false-font strings. Print tuning was indexed by the N1 difference in the ERPs between German words and false-font strings, while the N1 lexicality effect was indexed by the difference between German words and pseudowords. In addition, we measured reading fluency, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, auditory memory span, and vocabulary. After one year of formal reading instruction N1 print tuning was clearly present at the group level, and could be detected at the individual level in almost 90% of the children. The N1 lexicality effect, however, could not be reliably found. On the cognitive level, next to word-reading fluency, vocabulary was also associated with N1 print tuning, but not measures reflecting phonological processing. These results demonstrate the presence of print tuning in the first year of reading acquisition and its development at the individual level. Moreover, individual differences in print tuning are not only related to word-reading fluency, but also to semantic knowledge, indicating that at early stages of learning to read the top-down modulation of print tuning is semantic rather than phonological in nature.

Background: The relationship between phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term/working memory (ST/WM) and diagnostic category is investigated in control and dyslexic children, and the extent to which this depends on orthographic complexity. Methods: General cognitive, phonological and literacy skills were tested in 1,138 control and 1,114 dyslexic children speaking six different languages spanning a large range of orthographic complexity (Finnish, Hungarian, German, Dutch, French, English). Results: Phoneme deletion and RAN were strong concurrent predictors of developmental dyslexia, while verbal ST/WM and general verbal abilities played a comparatively minor role. In logistic regression models, more participants were classified correctly when orthography was more complex. The impact of phoneme deletion and RAN-digits was stronger in complex than in less complex orthographies. Conclusions: Findings are largely consistent with the literature on predictors of dyslexia and literacy skills, while uniquely demonstrating how orthographic complexity exacerbates some symptoms of dyslexia. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 2 footnotes.)

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that directed selective attention either to sub-syllabic phonology (i.e., rhyme judgments) or to melodies embedded within the words. ERPs elicited when participants selectively attended to phonology demonstrated a rhyming effect that was concurrent with online stimulus encoding and an orthographic effect that emerged later. ERP responses to the same stimuli presented under melodic focus, however, showed no evidence of sensitivity to rhyme or spelling patterns. Results reveal limitations to the automaticity of such ERP effects, suggesting that rhyme effects may depend, at least to some degree, on allocation of attention to phonology, which may in turn activate task-incidental orthographic information. (Contains 3 figures.)