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Background: Visual-spatial attention is associated with reading development, but we do not know whether this is primarily driven by the deployment of goal-directed or stimulus-driven attention. Method: One hundred ninety-four Chinese-speaking first graders completed two visual search tasks, in which they searched for a target among a number of distractor items. In the feature search task, the orientation of the target was different from that of the distractors (i.e., a horizontal line amid vertical lines), whereas in the conjunction search, the target was defined by a combination of orientation and colour (i.e., a red horizontal line among red vertical lines and green horizontal lines). They then completed two reading tasks in addition to morphological awareness, rapid naming, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal working memory tasks. Results: Accuracy in the conjunction, but not feature, search was positively correlated with Chinese character recognition and reading fluency. Moreover, conjunction search accuracy explained unique variance in character recognition accuracy after controlling for morphological awareness, rapid naming, and vocabulary, as well as age, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal working memory. Additionally, children with good reading skills tended to show smaller decreases in search accuracy with larger set sizes than those with poor reading skills. Conclusions: The data suggest that reading is associated with goal-directed but not stimulus-driven visual--spatial attention. This non-linguistic ability appears to contribute to reading beyond established reading-related linguistic skills.

This study aims to compare auditory temporal processing and phonological processing across locations and age levels and to test the direct and indirect effects of auditory temporal and phonological processing on proficiency in Chinese character reading. We recruited 108 typically developing children -- 25 and 24 kindergarteners from Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively, and 34 and 25 primary school students from Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively. Our findings showed that, before learning PCS, the languages' phonological complexity did not affect the importance of ATP in Chinese reading. Also, we found the use of PCS could lead to a direct effect from students' ATP to Chinese character reading as well as through phonological awareness. Our findings indicated that ways of learning to read influence children's patterns of cognitive and linguistic abilities, which should be considered in teaching designs for reading. [Translation from English by Mercè Rius.]

The current study investigated perceptual simulation and its relationship with literacy ability in Chinese children. Ninety-three third-grade Hong Kong Chinese children completed a sentence-picture verification task for perceptual simulation. In this task, a sentence mentioning an object was presented first, followed by a picture involving the object. The picture was either a perceptual match with the preceding sentence or a mismatch. The participants were asked to judge whether the object in the picture was mentioned in the preceding sentence. Literacy ability was measured by a Chinese character reading task. Model analysis revealed a significant mismatch effect: the children gave faster correct responses to the perceptually matched pictures than to the mismatched ones. Furthermore, the children with lower literacy abilities displayed larger mismatch effects than those with higher literacy abilities. The results suggest that children with lower literacy abilities may rely more heavily on reactivated perceptual representations in language comprehension.

Background: Physically manipulating objects according to texts can improve reading performance. This study examined whether these benefits can also be achieved via observing these manipulations or whether, because of an additional involvement of an action system, the physical manipulation might induce larger effects. Methods: In total, 134 second graders and 140 fourth graders completed tasks measuring reading comprehension, nonverbal intelligence, rapid automatised naming, working memory, morphological awareness and phonological awareness. Each child was assigned to one of three groups: rereading, observed manipulation and participant-performed manipulation. Those in the observed manipulation group were asked to reread the story while simultaneously watching a video of corresponding manipulations. Those in the participant-performed manipulation group were instructed to manipulate objects to represent the story's content. The next period was concerned with the practice effects of the manipulations. The children in the observed manipulation group were instructed to read a new story using the participant-performed manipulation approach. Those in the other two groups were asked to read the new story using the same strategies they had used in the former period. Results: The results for the acute improvement showed that, for the fourth graders, the participant-performed manipulation led to a greater improvement than the observed one, and both of the manipulations provided greater improvements than the rereading. Our examination of the practice effect indicated that the participant-performed manipulation group only had an advantage over the rereading group, not the observed manipulation group, in text comprehension as a result of experience with object manipulation. Conclusions: The current results suggest that the observed and physical manipulations make unique contributions to reading comprehension. In addition, these two manipulations lead to similar facilitating effects of subsequent object manipulation on text comprehension.

In the present study, we aimed to investigate the different impacts of temporal processing on reading by Chinese children with and without dyslexia. In total, 27 children with dyslexia who had a deficit in rapid automatized naming (RAN) (D_R), 37 children with dyslexia who had deficits in both RAN and phonological awareness (PA) (D_RP), and 40 typically developing children (TD) were recruited in Taiwan. The children were asked to complete non‐verbal intelligence, PA, RAN, Chinese character reading tasks and an auditory temporal order judgement (ATOJ) task. Our results of a multiple regression model showed that the ATOJ accounted for unique variances in the reading differences between the children in the D_R and TD groups; performance was controlled for non‐verbal intelligence, PA and RAN tasks. Theoretically, we provide possible explanations for the controversial findings in the field of Chinese children with dyslexia and, practically, suggest different interventions should be provided for children with dyslexia with different underlying impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, 144 second- and 150 fourth-grade Chinese students were recruited to complete a Chinese character learning task to explore the specific contributions of sensory-motor components (i.e., visual, motor, and haptic systems) of handwriting to Chinese character learning. After matching for age, nonverbal IQ, and a series of cognitive-linguistic skills, each child was assigned to 1 of 4 training conditions (i.e., reading, visual processing, air-writing, or handwriting) to investigate the specific contributions of the sensory-motor components (i.e., visual, motor, and haptic systems) of handwriting to Chinese character learning. In the reading condition, the children were shown images of characters. In the other 3 conditions, they were shown animations of how a given character is written. The participants were asked to view the animations in the visual processing condition, whereas in the air-writing and handwriting conditions they were asked, respectively, to follow the animations and write the Chinese characters with their index fingers in the air or write the Chinese characters with a pen on paper. They were asked to name the learnt characters in the posttest. Both air-writing and handwriting elicited a larger training effect than reading or visual processing, but there was no difference between the air-writing and handwriting groups. Also, no age differences were found in either the air-writing or the handwriting conditions. Unique contributions of visual-motor integration, motor programming, and their corresponding integration with a haptic system of handwriting to reading are discussed.

This study aimed to examine the effects of temporal processing training on the reading abilities of Chinese children with dyslexia. In total, 69 Chinese children with dyslexia in grades three through six were recruited in Taiwan. The children were divided into the following three equal groups: (1) auditory temporal processing training group, (2) visual temporal processing training group, and (3) control group with no specific training. The participants in both training groups received instruction with identical durations (30-40 min), intensities (12 times in total), and frequencies (three to four times per week). The participants in the control group were asked to independently surf some specified websites using devices similar to those used by the two experimental groups for an identical duration, intensity, and frequency. Our results indicated that the two groups who received temporal processing training exhibited significant correlations among Chinese character reading, rapid naming, and corresponding reading-related abilities, while visual temporal processing served as a significant predictor of Chinese character reading ability even if all background data, reading-related abilities, and auditory temporal processing were introduced first. Additionally, significant interactions were found between the Groups and Tested sessions in all the measures, except for phonological awareness, confirming the distinct effects of different temporal processing on most measures involved in this study. Further simple main effects revealed that only those who received the visual temporal processing training gained benefits in the corresponding reading-related ability (i.e., orthographic knowledge) and far-transfer to Chinese character reading.

In the present study, 151 third-grade Hong Kong children participated in two expression-picture matching experiments (a relation priming paradigm). In this paradigm, an unambiguous prime was first presented, followed by an ambiguous target that could be interpreted with either of two relations (i.e., Descriptor and Possessor). Children were asked to judge which picture matched with the compounds in both the prime and target sessions. The linear mixed model analysis was applied to investigate the semantic relation processing in novel ambiguous combination and its relationship with children's performances on morphological awareness tasks. In Experiment 1, the relation priming effect (i.e., children preferred to select the target pictures involving the same relation with the primes) was observed. At the same time, children's morphological awareness showed a positive moderation effect on relation priming. Experiment 2 investigated whether visual features, rather than semantic relations, produced priming effect. The interaction between semantic relation processing and morphological awareness was observed as well in the situation that the hints of visual features were removed. The results indicated that children with skilled morphological awareness, but not the children with less skilled morphological awareness, showed significant relation priming effect, even without the visual cues. Compared to children with less skilled morphological awareness, children with skilled morphological awareness were better in activating semantic relation information when reading compounds. These findings may help us understand the mechanism of the association between MA and Chinese literacy acquisition.

This study aimed to investigate the moderating effect of morphological awareness on the relationship between word detection skills and reading comprehension in Chinese children with and without dyslexia. The study included 116 Chinese children in third to sixth grades, with 60 children diagnosed with dyslexia and 56 matching typically developing children. ANCOVAs revealed significant group differences in word detection skills and morphological awareness, with children with dyslexia performing significantly worse than their typically developing peers. Partial correlation analyses showed significant correlations between reading comprehension and morphological awareness in typically developing children and between reading comprehension and both word detection skills and morphological awareness in children with dyslexia. Moderation analyses revealed that morphological awareness significantly moderated the relationship between word detection skills and reading comprehension in both groups. For typically developing children, the relationship was significant at higher levels of morphological awareness, while for children with dyslexia, the relationship was significant at lower levels of morphological awareness. The findings suggest that word detection skills may serve as a compensatory mechanism for children with dyslexia when morphological awareness is at lower levels, highlighting the need for targeted interventions and individualised approaches to reading instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, we tested a network model of reading difficulty by using state-of-the-art psychological network analysis. Four hundred and fifty-three Chinese first-grade children (about 38% female, mean age = 7.00, SD = 0.41) were divided into good (n = 154), competent (n = 147), and struggling readers (n = 152) based on their scores of Chinese character reading. The Extended Bayesian Information Criterion graphical lasso (EBICglasso) method was applied to estimate cross-sectional networks for the three groups. Each network included four cognitive nodes (homophone awareness, morphological structure awareness, phonological awareness, and vocabulary) and two ecological nodes (family socioeconomic status and the number of books at home). Chronological age and nonverbal intelligence were also included in the estimated networks. The global (i.e., global structure and global connectivity) and local patterns (i.e., the most important edges and nodes) in each network were reported. The network comparison results showed that global connectivity was significantly lower among struggling readers than for good readers, implying that a holistic impairment of bidirectional connections among multiple variables relates to the difficulty in learning to read. The theoretical and empirical implications and the significance of applying the network approach to reading research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]