Learning to read in Chinese: Evidence for reciprocal relationships between word reading and oral language skills

This study investigates the longitudinal predictors of the development of Chinese word reading skills and potential bidirectional relationships between Chinese word reading and oral language skills. We examine, in a 2‐year longitudinal study, a wide range of theoretically important predictors (phonological awareness, tone awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, rapid automatized naming, Pinyin knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) of reading in 143 primary‐school children living in mainland China. Initial levels of reading were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, and visual discrimination skills. Only initial reading levels predicted growth in reading. Initial reading also predicted growth in vocabulary knowledge and morphological construction. This pattern demonstrates that the early stages of learning to read in Chinese places demands on semantic (vocabulary) and visual skills in addition to phonological skills. Furthermore, early levels of word reading predict the growth of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness suggesting that the development of these oral language skills is facilitated by learning to read.     

Testing the concurrent and predictive relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness

The relations among articulation accuracy, speech perception, and phoneme awareness were examined in a sample of 97 typically developing children ages 48 to 66 months. Of these 97 children, 46 were assessed twice at ages 4 and 5 years. Children completed two tasks for each of the three skills, assessing these abilities for the target phoneme /r/ and the control phoneme /m/ in the word-initial position. Concurrent analyses revealed that phoneme-specific relations existed among articulation, awareness, and perception. Articulation accuracy of /r/ predicted speech perception and phoneme awareness for /r/ after controlling for age, vocabulary, letter-word knowledge, and speech perception or phoneme awareness for the control phoneme /m/. The longitudinal analyses confirmed the pattern of relations. The findings are consistent with a model whereby children's articulation accuracy affects preexisting differences in phonological representations and, consequently, affects how children perceive, discriminate, and manipulate speech sounds.     

Phoneme awareness is a better predictor of early reading skill than onset-rime awareness

We present the results of a short-term longitudinal study. Children in the early stages of learning to read (5 and 6 year olds) were administered three different tasks (deletion, oddity, and detection) tapping awareness of four phonological units (initial phoneme, final phoneme, onset, and rime). Measures of phoneme awareness were the best concurrent and longitudinal predictors of reading skill with onset-rime skills making no additional predictive contribution once phonemic skills were accounted for. The findings are related to recent controversy over the role of large versus small phonological units as predictors of children's reading skills.     

Working Memory and Cognitive Skills in Individuals with Down Syndrome

This work is aimed at analyzing working memory (WM) components and their relationships with other cognitive processes in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Particular attention is given to examine whether a verbal WM deficit is due to difficulties in verbal abilities often showed by individuals with DS, or whether it is a deficit per se. A group of 20 individuals with DS was compared to a group of 20 typically developing (TD) children matched on vocabulary comprehension and to a group of 20 TD children matched on general verbal intelligence. The groups received a battery of 3 verbal and 3 visuospatial WM tasks requiring different degrees of control, and tests assessing verbal abilities (WPPSI verbal scale, PPVT), nonverbal skills (WPPSI performance scale), and logical thinking (LO). The results revealed that individuals with DS have deficits in both central executive (control) and verbal components of the WM system, and the latter one is independent of the general verbal abilities deficit. The data suggest that the development of central executive proceeds at a slower rate in individuals with DS and differently from TD children with comparable verbal abilities. The performance of individuals with DS on high-control WM tasks requires additional general resources that are strictly linked to intelligence.     

An experiment on measuring awareness of stuttering in individuals with Down syndrome

BackgroundAwareness of stuttering is likely to depend upon the development of the metalinguistic skill to discriminate between fluent speech and stuttering and the ability to identify one’s own speech as fluent or stuttered. Presently, little is known about these abilities in individuals with Down syndrome (DS).PurposeThis study investigates whether individuals with DS and typically developing (TD) children who stutter and who do not stutter differ in their ability to discriminate between fluent speech and stuttering. The second purpose of this study is to discover if this ability is correlated with their self-identification ability.MethodAn experiment to investigate awareness with tasks for discrimination of stuttering and self-identification was developed. It was administered to 28 individuals (7–19 years) with DS, 17 of them stutter and 11 do not, and 20 TD children (3–10 years), 8 of them stutter and 12 do not. Skills to discriminate stuttering were compared between these groups and correlated with self-identification within these groups. The influence of stuttering severity and developmental/chronological age on their ability to discriminate was also investigated.ResultsThe ability to discriminate does not differ significantly between the DS and TD group, but is highly influenced by developmental age. This ability correlates with self-identification but only for the TD individuals who speak fluently.ConclusionThe ability to discriminate matures around the age of 7 and conscious awareness may rely on this ability. Differences between the present findings and earlier studies suggest that differentiation in levels and types of awareness is warranted.     

Getting ready for reading: A follow‐up study of inner city second language learners at the end of Key Stage 1

Background: A previous study (Stuart, 1999) showed that early phoneme awareness and phonics teaching improved reading and spelling ability in inner‐city schoolchildren in Key Stage 1, most of whom were learning English as a second language. Aims: The present study, a follow‐up of these children at the end of Key Stage 1, addresses four main questions: (1) Are these improvements maintained to the end of Key Stage 1? (2) Are different patterns of cognitive process evident in the word recognition skills of phonics trained versus untrained children? (3) Do the phonics trained children now also show a significant advantage in reading comprehension? (4) Are there differences in amount of reading, in self‐concept as readers and in oral vocabulary development between phonics trained and untrained children? Relationships between reading and spelling ages and Key Stage 1 SATs levels are also explored. Sample: Data are reported from 101 seven‐year‐olds (85 of whom were second language learners) remaining from the original 112 children reported on previously. Method: Children were tested on four standardized tests of reading, spelling and vocabulary, and on a further six experimental tests of phoneme segmentation, grapheme‐phoneme correspondence knowledge, regular, exception and nonword reading, author recognition and reading self‐concept. Results: Lasting influences of early phoneme awareness and phonics teaching on phoneme awareness, grapheme‐phoneme correspondence knowledge, word reading and spelling were found. Part of the previously untrained group had now received structured phonics teaching, and were therefore treated as a third (late trained) group. Early and late‐trained groups showed similar levels of attainment and similar cognitive processing patterns, which were different from the untrained group. However, there were no influences of training on reading comprehension, self‐concept or oral vocabulary. Conclusions: Early phoneme awareness and phonics training efficiently accelerates the word recognition and spelling skills of first and second language learners alike. However, this is not sufficient to bootstrap the development of language comprehension in the second language learners. Further research is needed into the kinds of language teaching that will best develop their oral and written language comprehension.     

Early Gesture Provides a Helping Hand to Spoken Vocabulary Development for Children with Autism,Down Syndrome,and Typical Development

Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects (“cat”). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the same door-opening role in word learning for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Down syndrome (DS), who show delayed vocabulary development and who differ in the strength of gesture production. To answer this question, we observed 23 18-month-old TD children, 23 30-month-old children with ASD, and 23 30-month-old children with DS 5 times over a year during parent–child interactions. Children in all 3 groups initially expressed a greater proportion of referents uniquely in gesture than in speech. Many of these unique gestures subsequently entered children’s spoken vocabularies within a year—a pattern that was slightly less robust for children with DS, whose word production was the most markedly delayed. These results indicate that gesture is as fundamental to vocabulary development for children with developmental disorders as it is for TD children.     

Longitudinal relationships between speech perception,phonological skills and reading in children at high‐risk of dyslexia

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive relationships between categorical speech perception, phoneme awareness, RAN, language, attention and reading at ages 5½ and 6½ years in 237 children many of whom were at high risk of reading difficulties. Speech perception at 5½ years correlated with language, attention, phoneme awareness and RAN concurrently and was a predictor of reading at 6½ years. There was no significant indirect effect of speech perception on reading via phoneme awareness, suggesting that its effects are separable from those of phoneme awareness. Children classified with dyslexia at 8 years had poorer speech perception than age‐controls at 5½ years and children with language disorders (with or without dyslexia) had more severe difficulties with both speech perception and attention control. Categorical speech perception tasks tap factors extraneous to perception, including decision‐making skills. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel the complex relationships between categorical speech perception tasks and measures of reading and language and attention.     

小学低年级汉语儿童语言能力的发展轨迹:认知能力的预测作用

对177名小学一年级学生进行了长达一年的三次追踪,通过多层线性模型探索了儿童汉字识别、口语词汇和限时阅读理解能力的发展轨迹及复合语素意识、正字法意识和快速命名能力对三者的预测作用,结果发现：（1）三种语言能力均随时间呈现显著的线性增长趋势,汉字识别的个体差异逐渐缩小,口语词汇的个体差异相对稳定,而限时阅读理解成绩的差异逐渐扩大;（2）三种认知能力对汉字识别和限时阅读理解的初始成绩均有显著的正向预测作用,复合语素意识不仅能预测口语词汇的初始成绩,还能正向预测限时阅读理解的发展速度。     

Reading Development in Typically Developing Children and Children With Prenatal or Perinatal Brain Lesions: Differential School Year and Summer Growth

Summer slide, uneven growth of academic skills during the calendar year, captures the fact that the learning gains children make during the school year do not continue at the same pace over the summer, when children are typically not in school. We compared growth of reading skills during the school year and during the summer months in children with prenatal or perinatal brain lesions (PL) and typically developing (TD) children from varying socioeconomic-status (SES) backgrounds as a new way to probe the role of structured environmental support in functional plasticity for reading skills in children with PL. Results showed that children with PL performed worse than TD children on both reading decoding and reading comprehension. Group differences were primarily driven by children with larger lesions and children with right-hemisphere lesions (RH). For reading comprehension, children with RH showed greater growth during the school year but more slide during the summer months than both TD children and children with left-hemisphere lesions, implicating a particularly strong role of structured input in supporting reading comprehension in this group. TD children from lower-SES backgrounds fell behind their TD peers from higher-SES backgrounds on decoding and reading comprehension but did not show differential patterns of school year and summer growth. Overall, results highlight the importance of considering the role of a host of factors interacting at multiple levels of analyses, including biological and environmental, in influencing developmental trajectories of TD children and atypically developing children.     

Noticing and commenting on what’s new: differences and similarities among 22‐month‐old typically developing children,children with Down syndrome and children with autism

Twenty 22‐month‐old typically developing children (TD), 11 children with Down syndrome (DS) and 10 children with autism (A), all functioning at a one‐ or two‐word linguistic level, were given eight series of four toys to explore. In each series, the first three toys (i.e. Trials 1–3) were identical, but the fourth toy (i.e. Trial 4) differed on a property or in identity. The children sat beside their mother and the experimenter while exploring the toys. Of interest was whether (1) the TD children would show more exploratory and communicative behavior related to the toys on Trials 1 and 4 than 2 and 3, and (2) how the response patterns of nontypically developing children would compare. The DS group showed a pattern of responding similar to that of the TD group with respect to their attention and interest in the toys, although a much lower rate of communicating with their mother. In contrast, the A group differed significantly from both other groups with respect to both the toys they found of interest and the timing of their topic initiations. Implications for observing declarative communication among children with Down syndrome and children with autism are discussed.     

Phonemes, rimes, vocabulary, and grammatical skills as foundations of early reading development: evidence from a longitudinal study

The authors present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 90 British children beginning at school entry when they were 4 years 9 months old (range = 4 years 2 months to 5 years 2 months). The relationships among early phonological skills, letter knowledge, grammatical skills, and vocabulary knowledge were investigated as predictors of word recognition and reading comprehension. Word recognition skills were consistently predicted by earlier measures of letter knowledge and phoneme sensitivity (but not by vocabulary knowledge, rhyme skills, or grammatical skills). In contrast, reading comprehension was predicted by prior word recognition skills, vocabulary knowledge, and grammatical skills. The results are related to current theories about the role of phonological, grammatical, and vocabulary skills in the development of early reading skills.     

The cognitive bases of learning to read and spell in Greek: evidence from a longitudinal study

We conducted a longitudinal study examining the role of phonemic awareness, phonological processing, and grammatical skills in the development of reading and spelling abilities in Greek. A battery of cognitive, linguistic, and literacy tasks was administered to 131 primary school children (65 7-year-olds and 66 9-year-olds) and was repeated in the following year (8- and 10-year-olds, respectively). Phoneme awareness, speech rate, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) were concurrent predictors of reading rate at Time 1 (T1), and speech rate was a longitudinal predictor of reading rate at Time 2 (T2) when reading at T1 was controlled. The predictors of spelling differed from those of reading; phoneme awareness and speech rate predicted concurrent attainments at T1, and phoneme awareness was a robust longitudinal predictor. Despite the differences in the degree of transparency between the Greek and English orthographies, phoneme awareness predicts variations in learning to read and spell in both languages.     

Spoken and gestural production in a naming task by young children with Down syndrome

Lexical production in children with Down syndrome (DS) was investigated by examining spoken naming accuracy and the use of spontaneous gestures in a picture naming task. Fifteen children with DS (range 3.8-8.3 years) were compared to typically developing children (TD), matched for chronological age and developmental age (range 2.6-4.3 years). Relative to TD children, children with DS were less accurate in speech (producing a greater number of unintelligible answers), yet they produced more gestures overall and of these a significantly higher percentage of iconic gestures. Furthermore, the iconic gestures produced by children with DS accompanied by incorrect or no speech often expressed a concept similar to that of the target word, suggesting deeper conceptual knowledge relative to that expressed only in speech.     

小学低年级儿童汉语语素意识、口语词汇知识对阅读能力的影响:一项追踪研究

以149名小学一年级儿童为被试，进行为期三年的追踪，采用交叉滞后的分析方法考察了儿童汉语语素意识、口语词汇知识与阅读能力的关系。结果发现：（1）儿童汉语语素意识、口语词汇知识、阅读准确性和阅读流畅性在小学1~3年级间有显著增长；（2）控制一般认知能力、语音意识、快速命名后，口语词汇知识在儿童早期的语素意识与后期的阅读能力之间起跨时间点的中介作用。结果表明，儿童早期的语素意识水平能够提高词汇知识获得的效率，进而促进阅读能力的发展。     

Morphological awareness predicts the growth rate of Chinese character reading

In this longitudinal study, we assessed 88 Hong Kong Chinese typically developing kindergarteners' Chinese character reading accuracy four times with 6‐month intervals over 1.5 years with the first testing point in the fall of the second year of kindergarten (K2), during which morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, visual–spatial relationships, and nonverbal IQ were tested (Time 1). The latent growth curve modeling showed that reading development in Chinese of typically developing kindergarteners followed a cumulative linear trajectory, suggesting that children with higher initial reading ability develop reading ability at a faster rate. Additionally, morphological awareness at K2 positively and uniquely predicted a linear growth pattern of character reading between K2 and K3 over 1.5 years, a period in which formal teaching and learning Chinese takes place in Hong Kong. Contributing to the literature, these findings highlighted the unique significance of morphological awareness in the growth rate of reading: Typically developing children with better early morphological awareness tend to have a higher initial point of reading ability and, more importantly, a faster growth rate, resulting in a wider discrepancy of developmental outcomes between low‐ and high‐ performers. The results suggest that greater attention should be focused on the development of morphological awareness in early readers, given its salient role in Chinese reading development.     

Receptive vocabulary and semantic knowledge in children with SLI and children with Down syndrome

Receptive vocabulary and associated semantic knowledge were compared within and between groups of children with specific language impairment (SLI), children with Down syndrome (DS), and typically developing children. To overcome the potential confounding effects of speech or language difficulties on verbal tests of semantic knowledge, a novel task was devised based on picture-based semantic association tests used to assess adult patients with semantic dementia. Receptive vocabulary, measured by word-picture matching, of children with SLI was weak relative to chronological age and to nonverbal mental age but their semantic knowledge, probed across the same lexical items, did not differ significantly from that of vocabulary-matched typically developing children. By contrast, although receptive vocabulary of children with DS was a relative strength compared to nonverbal cognitive abilities (p < .0001), DS was associated with a significant deficit in semantic knowledge (p < .0001) indicative of dissociation between word-picture matching vocabulary and depth of semantic knowledge. Overall, these data challenge the integrity of semantic-conceptual development in DS and imply that contemporary theories of semantic cognition should also seek to incorporate evidence from atypical conceptual development.     

Phoneme awareness is a key component of alphabetic literacy skills in consistent and inconsistent orthographies: evidence from Czech and English children

Two studies investigated the importance of phoneme awareness relative to other predictors in the development of reading and spelling among children learning a consistent orthography (Czech) and an inconsistent orthography (English). In Study 1, structural equation models revealed that Czech (n=107) and English (n=71) data were fitted well by the same predictors of reading and spelling. Phoneme awareness was a unique predictor in all models. In Study 2, Czech (n=40) and English (n=27) children with dyslexia showed similar deficits on phoneme awareness relative to their age- and spelling-matched control peers. Phoneme awareness appears to be a core component skill of alphabetic literacy, which is equally important for learners of consistent and inconsistent orthographies.     

Changes in lower limb co-contraction and stiffness by toddlers with Down syndrome and toddlers with typical development during the acquisition of independent gait

During gait acquisition, children learn to use their changing resources to meet the requirements of the task. Compared to typically developing toddlers (TD), toddlers with Down syndrome (DS) have functionally different musculoskeletal characteristics, such as hypotonia, and joint and ligament laxity, that could produce a reduced passive stiffness. The interplay between this inherently lower passive stiffness and the demands of walking may result in different strategies during gait acquisition. This study compared normalized global stiffness and lower limb's co-contraction indices (CCI) used by toddlers with TD (n=12) and with DS (n=12), during the early stages of gait acquisition. Stiffness and CCI were normalized by gravitational torque (mLg) in both phases of gait (stance, swing). Five longitudinal evaluations were conducted from the onset of locomotion until three months post-acquisition. All children were video taped and had electromyographic (EMG) recordings from muscle pairs of one leg, which were used to calculate CCI of hip, knee, ankle, and total leg CCI. Body and lower limb stiffness were calculated according to a hybrid pendulum resonance equation. Results from ANOVAs revealed no group differences on stiffness or on CCI's during stance but children with DS showed greater CCI during swing. Despite the structural musculoskeletal differences between toddlers with TD and with DS, the similarities observed in their processes of gait development suggest functional equivalences.     

The causal role of phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge in learning to read: combining intervention studies with mediation analyses

There is good evidence that phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge are reliable longitudinal predictors of learning to read, though whether they have a causal effect remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results of a mediation analysis using data from a previous large-scale intervention study. We found that a phonology and reading intervention that taught letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness produced significant improvements in these two skills and in later word-level reading and spelling skills. Improvements in letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness at the end of the intervention fully mediated the improvements seen in children's word-level literacy skills 5 months after the intervention finished. Our findings support the conclusion that letter-sound knowledge and phoneme awareness are two causal influences on the development of children's early literacy skills.