Semantic Radical Awareness in Chinese Dyslexic Children and Its Role in Chinese Word Reading.

The present study examined semantic radical awareness in Chinese dyslexic children and how such awareness related to Chinese word reading. A group of Chinese dyslexic children (with a mean age of 10 years) and two control groups (with mean ages of 10 years 1 month and 7 years 7 months, respectively) were tested on Chinese word reading, semantic categorization skill, and positional and functional knowledge of semantic radicals. Results showed that the dyslexia group performed significantly worse than the reading-level control group in producing characters with the same semantic radicals. They also made less effective use of high frequency, lexical, and transparent semantic radicals than did age controls. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that awareness of various aspects of semantic radical knowledge was a significant predictor of Chinese word reading. These results suggest that weakness in semantic radical awareness of Chinese dyslexic children may reflect their poor quality of lexical representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]