Differences and Similarities in the Contributions of Phonological Awareness, Orthographic Knowledge and Semantic Competence to Reading Fluency in Chinese School-Age Children With and Without Hearing Loss

The Relationships of Oral Reading Fluency at Word, Sentence, and Passage Levels and Reading Comprehension in Chinese

This study aims to expand our understanding of the relations of oral reading fluency at word, sentence, and passage levels to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking secondary school-aged students. In total, 80 participants (46 males and 34 females) ranging from 13 to 15 years old joined this study and were tested on tasks of oral reading fluency at three levels, reading comprehension, and nonverbal IQ. Our results showed a clear relationship from fluency at the level of the word to the sentence and then the passage in oral reading fluency as well as both the direct and indirect importance of word-level oral reading fluency in reading comprehension. Only the indirect effect from word-level oral reading fluency to reading comprehension through passage-level oral reading fluency was significant. Our findings suggest that sentence-level oral reading fluency is the crucial component to reading comprehension in Chinese. Additionally, recognition of the potential value of unique features, such as syntactic awareness and word segment accuracy, that happen at the sentence level should be integrated into instructional activities for reading.

Investigation of early literacy skills of preschool children with hearing loss

BACKGROUND

Early literacy development is critical for children with hearing loss to develop literacy skills in the years to come. The aim of this study is to compare the early literacy skills of 60-72 months' children with hearing loss to the results of children with normal hearing.

METHODS

A total of 40 children (20 children with hearing aid (HA) and 20 children with normal hearing (NH) were evaluated in the study. Receptive and expressive language was assessed by Test of Early Language Development (TELD-3) and Early Literacy Test (EROT) was applied to assess the early literacy skills of all children in the study.

RESULTS

The receptive and expressive language results of the hearing-impaired group were significantly lower than those of normal hearing. Moreover, in EROT when a general analysis is made with main test titles such as, the vocabulary knowledge, letter knowledge, the listening comprehension, results showed that there was a significant difference between the HA and NH groups.

CONCLUSIONS

This study highlights the importance of supporting early literacy skills, which are prerequisite skills for reading and writing skills, in children who receive both mainstreaming education and special education in the risk group and/or continue their education in kindergarten.

Language Experience Modulates the Visual N200 Response for Disyllabic Chinese Words: An Event-Related Potential Study

Prior event-related potential (ERP) research on how the brain processes non-alphabetic scripts like Chinese has identified an N200 component related to early visual processing of Chinese disyllabic words. An enhanced N200 response was observed when similar prime-target pairs were presented, but it was not elicited when native Chinese speakers read Korean Hangul, a script resembling Chinese characters. This led to the proposal that N200 was not a universal marker for orthographic processing but rather specific and unique to Chinese. However, there was uncertainty due to the absence of Korean participants in the previous research. The impact of language experience on N200 remains unclear. To address this, the present pilot ERP study included three adult groups (totaling 30 participants) with varying language proficiency levels. The participants judged if randomly presented words were Chinese or Korean, while the ERP responses were recorded. The behavioral data showed high accuracy across the groups. The reaction times differed between the groups with the native speakers responding faster. The N200 patterns varied across the groups. Both Chinese native speakers and Chinese-as-second-language learners showed stronger N200 responses for Chinese words compared to Korean words regardless of whether an adaptive or a fixed-time window was used for the N200 quantification, but this was not the case for Korean native speakers. Our cross-linguistic study suggests that N200 is not exclusive to Chinese orthography. Instead, it reflects general visual processing sensitive to both orthographic features and learning experience.

Reading Comprehension of Chinese-Speaking Children With Hearing Loss: The Roles of Metalinguistic Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge

PURPOSE

This study aims to explore the contributions of phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA) to the reading comprehension skills of Chinese-speaking children with hearing loss (HL) and examine the possible mediation effect of vocabulary knowledge on the relationships of PA and MA with their reading comprehension.

METHOD

The participants were 28 Chinese-speaking children with HL, who were followed from Grade 1 through Grade 2. They were administered a series of tests that measured their PA and MA at the beginning of Grade 1, vocabulary knowledge at the end of Grade 1, and reading comprehension at the end of Grade 2.

RESULTS

MA significantly accounted for additional variance in reading comprehension beyond the effect of PA but not vice versa. Both PA and MA contributed uniquely to vocabulary knowledge, which completely mediated the relationships of PA and MA with reading comprehension.

CONCLUSIONS

PA and MA are both essential to the development of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children with HL; however, MA seems to be more important than PA in their reading comprehension. PA and MA significantly affect children's reading comprehension through their influence on vocabulary knowledge. This study has replicated previous evidence on the importance of PA, MA, and vocabulary knowledge in the reading comprehension of children with typical hearing, and has extended its significance to children with HL. In addition, the findings have the potential to inform educational practitioners regarding the importance of teaching essential reading skills to Chinese-speaking children with HL.

Phonological Awareness and Working Memory in Mandarin-Speaking Preschool-Aged Children With Cochlear Implants

PURPOSE

Cochlear implants (CIs) provide significant benefits for profoundly deaf children in their language and cognitive development. However, it remains unclear whether Mandarin-speaking young children with early implantation can develop age-equivalent phonological awareness (PA) skill and working memory (WM) capacity as their normal hearing (NH) peers. The aim of this study was to investigate PA and WM in preschool-aged children with or without hearing loss and to examine the relationship between the two basic skills.

METHOD

The data were collected from 16 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with CIs and 16 age-matched children with NH. All preschool participants were instructed to complete four phonological detection tasks and four digit span tasks. Linear mixed-effects modeling was performed to evaluate PA and WM performances between two groups across different tasks.

RESULTS

CI preschoolers showed comparable performances on par with NH controls in phonological detections and visual digit spans. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between phonological detections and auditory digit spans in preschool-aged children with CIs.

CONCLUSION

With early implantation, the congenitally deaf children were capable of developing age-appropriate PA skill and WM capacity, which have practical implications for aural rehabilitation in this special pediatric population.