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  • Mechanisms underlying the effects of morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) on the reading abilities of Chinese Children: An analysis of mediating effects across different stages

    Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2023-09-27

    Abstract: Reading is important for children’s future academic success. Clarifying the mechanisms underlying reading ability has been a heated issue in reading research for decades. Most previous studies have focused solely on reading comprehension but scarcely paid attention to the mechanisms underlying reading fluency throughout elementary school. Reading fluency at the text level has been acknowledged as one of the indicators of children’s overall reading competence. Therefore, the present study aimed to clarify the shareability and specificity of the mechanisms underlying Chinese children’s reading comprehension and reading fluency across different developmental stages.
    We recruited a total of 416 Chinese children in grades 2, 4 and 6 (lower, middle and upper stages) of elementary school and were then followed up for half a year. In the fall semester (Time 1), a series of tasks, including general cognitive ability; working memory; phonological, orthographic and morphological awareness; rapid automatized naming (RAN); word recognition accuracy; word recognition fluency and vocabulary knowledge, were administered. In the second or spring semester (Time 2), reading comprehension and reading fluency were administered. Three mediation models were fitted to the data with T1 morphological awareness and RAN as predictors, T1 word recognition accuracy, word recognition fluency, and vocabulary knowledge as mediators and T2 reading comprehension and reading fluency as outcomes. The remaining variables were controlled in all the three models.
    Results indicated that morphological awareness and RAN significantly predicted reading comprehension and reading fluency at T2 via word recognition accuracy among children in the lower stage after controlling for the effects of T1 general cognitive ability, T1 working memory and T1 phonological and orthographic awareness. The mediating effect of T1 word recognition fluency in the contribution of T1 RAN to T2 reading fluency was also significant. However, in the middle and upper stages, the indirect effects of T1 morphological awareness and T1 RAN on T2 reading comprehension were not significant; for T2 reading fluency, the mediating role of T1 word recognition accuracy in the effect of T1 morphological awareness was significant in both stages, but the mediated role of T1 word recognition fluency was only significant in the middle stage. Moreover, T1 RAN contributed to it via T1 word recognition accuracy and fluency.
    These findings attest to both the shareability and specificity in the mechanisms underlying reading comprehension and reading fluency across different developmental stages. These findings suggest that reading fluency should be incorporated as a legitimate index of children’s reading ability. They further imply that the developmental stages require consideration when exploring the mechanisms underlying the effects of morphological awareness and RAN on reading abilities (comprehension and fluency). This study provides empirical evidence for understanding the science of reading development among Chinese children and has important implications for future reading research and educational intervention.

  • Comparative Study of Foreign Digital Reading and Paper Reading——Based on Literature Analysis and Review

    Subjects: Library Science,Information Science >> Library Science submitted time 2023-08-27 Cooperative journals: 《图书情报工作》

    Abstract: [Purpose/significance] Along with the increasing advance of the modern digital technology, digital reading has become the main reading mode. Through comparison and analysis of digital reading and paper reading, this paper clarifies the relationship between digital reading and paper reading, and provides reference for optimizing the digital resource construction and reading promotion service in our country.[Method/process] This paper reviews the literature on digital reading and paper reading in foreign countries, and finds that there are three clusters resulting from comparative study. They are reading preference, reading comprehension and reading experience. Therefore, the paper is analyzed in detail from these three aspects.[Result/conclusion] The foreign literatures mainly use the methods of experiment, questionnaire survey, depth interview, eye-tracking measures and electroencephalogram (EEG) to study the characteristics and differences of digital reading and paper reading. Digital reading and paper reading in different aspects present their own unique advantages and regularities. In the digital age, the two parties should complement each other. This paper puts forward the enlightenment to China's related research and library reading promotion service.

  • Experimental Study of Reading Comprehension Effects and Immersive Experience on Paper Reading and Digital Reading——Taking Science Knowledge as an Example

    Subjects: Library Science,Information Science >> Library Science submitted time 2023-08-27 Cooperative journals: 《图书情报工作》

    Abstract: [Purpose/significance]This paper simulates the reading situation and environment of paper reading and digital reading in reality to observe and test the difference of reading effect between digital reading and paper reading,in order to provide reference for library reading service and reading resource construction.[Method/process] This study uses the middle-length science popularization article as an example to compare the differences between paper reading and digital reading from the perspective of reading comprehension and immersive experience using the control group experiment method.[Result/conclusion] Users' reading comprehension effect of paper reading is better than that of digital reading in the reading of middle-length popular science articles, but there is no significant difference in reading immersive experience. Users' reading immersion experience is related to education and personality. The library's reading service and resource construction should be based on the reader's personalized analysis and service.

  • 词典互动对儿童电子图画书阅读的影响

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: In the digital era, young children have become increasingly exposed to electronic picture books, both at home and in educational settings. Most electronic picture books are programmed to be interactive such as being functional with dictionary interactivity. Dictionary interactivity provides young children an explanation of the word and clarifies its meaning with the animation. The effect of dictionary interactivity on picture book reading among young children has been the focus of research for the past two decades. To summarize the contribution of dictionary interactivity on the young children’s reading engagement, vocabulary learning and story comprehension, we conducted a systematic review of the literature.This review identified that the dictionary interactivity facilitates young children’s engagement in reading electronic picture books. With the support of dictionary interactivity, young children achieve similar results in reading electronic picture books as they engaged in shared reading with adults with hardcopy picture books. Compared to traditional pictures books, the advantage of electronic books with dictionary interactivity in promoting children’ engagement is not obvious. We propose that this result is partially due to the assessments of children’s reading engagement in previous studies that lack objectiveness.In terms of vocabulary learning, the review found the dictionary interactivity offer the similar educational affordance as print picture book on vocabulary learning. Young children reading electronic picture book with dictionary interactivity learn more words that appear in the book, and young children progressed the most after reading the electronic picture book with dynamic dictionary and the printed focal words. The effectiveness of dictionary interactivity in the support of vocabulary learning among children with special needs is well recognized, yet its effect on children from different socioeconomic status remains debatable. Inconsistent findings exist in different empirical studies regarding the effect of dictionary interactivity on children’s story comprehension. It is difficult to draw a conclusion due to the research design and the assessment of story comprehension that varied in previous studies. The factors including the content of text, the means of interactions with dictionary interactivity during reading, and children’s individual differences were identified that may impact the effect of dictionary interactivity on children’s reading comprehension. Findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive load theory and multi-media learning theory.This review proposed a few revenues for future studies. Firstly, to assess children’s reading engagement more effectively, the application of eye-trackers and bio-feedback instrument in future research may help to achieve more solid evidence. Secondly, in addition to explore the content of text and types of vocabulary that have impact on children’s vocabulary learning with dictionary interactivity, the factors relating to children’s initiative and the complexity of dictionary interactivity merit further exploration. Thirdly, intervention study is necessary to promote young children’s reading engagement, vocabulary learning and story comprehension, based on their individual characteristics. Finally, most existing research focuses on one aspect of children reading experiences (reading engagement, vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension) that are associated with the function of dictionary interactivity, yet little attention focuses on the mechanisms underpinning the factors that impact the three different aspects in general. Future research that explores the underlying mechanisms form maximizing the function of dictionary interactivity in promoting reading experiences with electronic picture books is needed.

  • 小学低年级儿童汉语语素意识在中的 作用:字词阅读流畅性的中介效应

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》

    Abstract: Evidences accumulated in the past decades have documented that reading-related cognitive skills, such as phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness, play an importance role on Chinese children’s language and literacy development. The characteristics of Chinese, including its relatively simple phonological system, the almost perfectly consistent one to one to one correspondences among morpheme, character, and syllable, the predominant compounding structure of words, the great number of homophones and homographs, all make morphological awareness salient for Chinese literacy development. The structure of morphological awareness varies in different language systems. The comprehensive model of Chinese morphological awareness assumes three components: compounding awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness. Studies on the development of Chinese reading suggested that the morphological awareness is more important for reading comprehension than both phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. However, the mechanism underlying this phenonenon remains less clear. This longitudinal study examined the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. A two-year and four-wave cross-lagged design was used with a sample of 149 Chinese children (80 male and 69 female). We measured children’s morphological awareness from T1 to T4, word reading fluency and reading comprehension from T2 to T4. In addition, we also measured the general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming at T1 as control measures. A longitudinal cross-lagged panel model was conducted to investigate the role of morphological awareness in the reading comprehension and whether word reading fluency would mediate the association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, when controlling for general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming at T1, and the auto-regression. The present results showed that (1) the morphological awareness (compounding awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness), word reading fluency, and reading comprehension increased with time. (2) The cross-lagged paths from the morphological awareness at T1 to reading comprehension at T2 (standardized β = 0.24, p < 0.01), from the morphological awareness at T2 to the reading comprehension at T3 (standardized β = 0.25, p < 0.01), from the morphological awareness at T3 to the reading comprehension at T4 (standardized β = 0.26, p < 0.01), were significant, even after controlling for the general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming at T1, and the auto-regressive effect of reading comprehension. (3) The morphological awareness at T1 made significant indirect contributions to the reading comprehension at T3 via word reading at T2 (standardized β = 0.16, 95% CI [0.04, 0.29]) in addition to a significant direct contribution (β = 0.22, p < 0.05) after controlling the auto-regressive effect of reading comprehension and the reading-related skills among Chinese children. The results demonstrated the important role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension and the mechanism of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese young children. Specifically, there is a positive longitudinal effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension over and above continuity. In addition, it revealed significant indirect effects of morphological awareness on the reading comprehension via the word reading fluency. According to Automatic Theory in reading, most cognitive resources are spent on higher-level skills, such as drawing inferences and comprehension, if the processing of sub-skills became automatic. Possibly, children’s morphological awareness facilitates the accurate retrieval and integration of word meaning, and thereby influencs the reading comprehension. The currrent findings extend our understanding of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension.

  • 小学儿童口语词汇知识的发展轨迹及其对阅读能力的预测:一项潜变量增长模型

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》

    Abstract: Oral language serves as the foundation for reading development. A growing body of studies has pointed to the close connection between children’s oral vocabulary knowledge and their reading abilities. To advance reading research and literacy education, it is vital to clarify the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge in relation to reading abilities over children’s reading development. However, most existing research on this topic focused on either the starting point or the product of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, instead of the developmental trajectory over an extended period of time. To fill in this gap, the present study sought to reveal the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its association with reading abilities among Chinese children across elementary grades. This work recruited 149 Mandarin-Chinese-speaking, typically developing children from Mainland China, and they were followed up for six years from Grades 1 to 6. All participants were tested on a battery of reading-related tests for eight times (Time 1 to Time 8), and 117 children completed all tests from T1 to T8, thus in the final pool. Five testing time points had a 6-month interval (Time 1 to Time 5 were from the Fall semester of Grade 1 to the Fall semester of Grade3), and the subsequent three time points had a one-year interval (T6 to T8 were in the Fall semester from Grades 4 to 6). Children were assessed on their non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), orthographical awareness (OA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 8, and reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension at Time 8. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) the developmental trajectory of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge over time and (2) the predictive effects of the initial level (Time 1) and growth rates (Times 1-8) of oral vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at Time 8 while controlling for IQ, PA, MA, OA, and RAN measured at Time 1. Children’s oral vocabulary knowledge appeared to improve significantly, consistently over grades, and children’s initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linked to their growth rates over the years. The results of the conditional latent growth modeling showed that oral vocabulary knowledge made a significant, direct contribution to reading abilities, reading accuracy (initial status: B = 0.35, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.40, p < 0.001), reading fluency (initial status: B = 0.23, p = 0.037; growth rates: B = 0.27, p = 0.003), and reading comprehension (initial status: B = 0.39, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.48, p < 0.001). Overall, initial status and growth rates of oral vocabulary knowledge were stronger predictors of reading accuracy and reading comprehension than that of reading fluency, and the growth rate was a stronger predictor of reading abilities than the initial status. Our findings elucidate the developmental changes in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as clarify their unique, significant predictive power of reading abilities (reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension) in Chinese children from Grades 1 to 6. The findings shed light on the necessity of providing vocabulary learning opportunities for primary school children over their reading development.

  • 小学低年级儿童语音意识和语素意识对的影响:阅读流畅性的中介作用

    Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》

    Abstract: The ultimate goal of reading is to achieve the understanding of written text information means reading comprehension, which is closely related to children’s future learning. In recent years, the effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on reading comprehension have received extensive attention. Besides, reading comprehension may be influenced not only by factors at the meta-linguistic level but also by higher-level language skills, such as reading fluency. Children in the early elementary grades are in the stage of “learning to read”. In this stage, the younger children are transitioning from word-reading mode to sentence silent mode. Sentence reading fluency is a deep structure of reading fluency. Its cognitive processing is more complex than that of word reading fluency, which may be affected by word reading fluency. However, few studies have been conducted on the possible relationships among phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading fluency, sentence silent reading fluency and reading comprehension, especially the chain mediating roles of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the predictive effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on children’s reading comprehension in the “learning to read” stage, as well as the chain mediating effects of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. The study included 149 first-graders who were followed three times in two years, with their phonological awareness, morphological awareness measured at Time 1 (the fall semester in grade 1), word reading fluency and sentence silent fluency at Time 2 (the spring semester in grade 1), and reading comprehension at Time 3 (the fall semester in grade 2). In addition, general cognitive ability and auto-regression in reading comprehension, which were served as control variables, were also tested at Time 1 and Time 2 respectively. Spearman correlation analysis was used to investigate the correlation between variables. And then, the structural equation model (SEM) was built to investigate the effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on reading comprehension and the chain mediating effects of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. The results showed that: (1) phonological awareness and morphological awareness both could directly predict reading comprehension. (2) Word reading fluency mediates the relationship between phonological awareness and reading comprehension, and word reading fluency mediates morphological awareness and reading comprehension. (3) Word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency play a chain mediating role between phonological awareness and reading comprehension, and word reading fluency and sentence silent fluency play a chain mediating role between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. The results demonstrated that phonological awareness and morphological awareness not only play an important role in reading comprehension, but also affect sentence fluency through word reading fluency and ultimately affect reading comprehension.

  • 词典互动对儿童电子图画书阅读的影响

    submitted time 2023-03-25 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》

    Abstract: In the digital era, young children have become increasingly exposed to electronic picture books, both at home and in educational settings. Most electronic picture books are programmed to be interactive such as being functional with dictionary interactivity. Dictionary interactivity provides young children an explanation of the word and clarifies its meaning with the animation. The effect of dictionary interactivity on picture book reading among young children has been the focus of research for the past two decades. To summarize the contribution of dictionary interactivity on the young children’s reading engagement, vocabulary learning and story comprehension, we conducted a systematic review of the literature.This review identified that the dictionary interactivity facilitates young children’s engagement in reading electronic picture books. With the support of dictionary interactivity, young children achieve similar results in reading electronic picture books as they engaged in shared reading with adults with hardcopy picture books. Compared to traditional pictures books, the advantage of electronic books with dictionary interactivity in promoting children’ engagement is not obvious. We propose that this result is partially due to the assessments of children’s reading engagement in previous studies that lack objectiveness.In terms of vocabulary learning, the review found the dictionary interactivity offer the similar educational affordance as print picture book on vocabulary learning. Young children reading electronic picture book with dictionary interactivity learn more words that appear in the book, and young children progressed the most after reading the electronic picture book with dynamic dictionary and the printed focal words. The effectiveness of dictionary interactivity in the support of vocabulary learning among children with special needs is well recognized, yet its effect on children from different socioeconomic status remains debatable. Inconsistent findings exist in different empirical studies regarding the effect of dictionary interactivity on children’s story comprehension. It is difficult to draw a conclusion due to the research design and the assessment of story comprehension that varied in previous studies. The factors including the content of text, the means of interactions with dictionary interactivity during reading, and children’s individual differences were identified that may impact the effect of dictionary interactivity on children’s reading comprehension. Findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive load theory and multi-media learning theory.This review proposed a few revenues for future studies. Firstly, to assess children’s reading engagement more effectively, the application of eye-trackers and bio-feedback instrument in future research may help to achieve more solid evidence. Secondly, in addition to explore the content of text and types of vocabulary that have impact on children’s vocabulary learning with dictionary interactivity, the factors relating to children’s initiative and the complexity of dictionary interactivity merit further exploration. Thirdly, intervention study is necessary to promote young children’s reading engagement, vocabulary learning and story comprehension, based on their individual characteristics. Finally, most existing research focuses on one aspect of children reading experiences (reading engagement, vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension) that are associated with the function of dictionary interactivity, yet little attention focuses on the mechanisms underpinning the factors that impact the three different aspects in general. Future research that explores the underlying mechanisms form maximizing the function of dictionary interactivity in promoting reading experiences with electronic picture books is needed.

  • 小学儿童口语词汇知识的发展轨迹及其对阅读能力的预测:一项潜变量增长模型

    Subjects: Nursing >> Nursing submitted time 2023-03-16 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》

    Abstract: Oral language serves as the foundation for reading development. A growing body of studies has pointed to the close connection between children’s oral vocabulary knowledge and their reading abilities. To advance reading research and literacy education, it is vital to clarify the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge in relation to reading abilities over children’s reading development. However, most existing research on this topic focused on either the starting point or the product of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, instead of the developmental trajectory over an extended period of time. To fill in this gap, the present study sought to reveal the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its association with reading abilities among Chinese children across elementary grades. This work recruited 149 Mandarin-Chinese-speaking, typically developing children from Mainland China, and they were followed up for six years from Grades 1 to 6. All participants were tested on a battery of reading-related tests for eight times (Time 1 to Time 8), and 117 children completed all tests from T1 to T8, thus in the final pool. Five testing time points had a 6-month interval (Time 1 to Time 5 were from the Fall semester of Grade 1 to the Fall semester of Grade3), and the subsequent three time points had a one-year interval (T6 to T8 were in the Fall semester from Grades 4 to 6). Children were assessed on their non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), orthographical awareness (OA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 8, and reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension at Time 8. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) the developmental trajectory of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge over time and (2) the predictive effects of the initial level (Time 1) and growth rates (Times 1-8) of oral vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at Time 8 while controlling for IQ, PA, MA, OA, and RAN measured at Time 1. Children’s oral vocabulary knowledge appeared to improve significantly, consistently over grades, and children’s initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linked to their growth rates over the years. The results of the conditional latent growth modeling showed that oral vocabulary knowledge made a significant, direct contribution to reading abilities, reading accuracy (initial status: B = 0.35, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.40, p < 0.001), reading fluency (initial status: B = 0.23, p = 0.037; growth rates: B = 0.27, p = 0.003), and reading comprehension (initial status: B = 0.39, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.48, p < 0.001). Overall, initial status and growth rates of oral vocabulary knowledge were stronger predictors of reading accuracy and reading comprehension than that of reading fluency, and the growth rate was a stronger predictor of reading abilities than the initial status. Our findings elucidate the developmental changes in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as clarify their unique, significant predictive power of reading abilities (reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension) in Chinese children from Grades 1 to 6. The findings shed light on the necessity of providing vocabulary learning opportunities for primary school children over their reading development.

  • The developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its predictive effects on reading abilities among Chinese primary school students: A latent growth model

    Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2023-03-01

    Abstract: Oral language serves as the foundation for reading development. A growing body of studies has pointed to the close connection between children’s oral vocabulary knowledge and their reading abilities. To advance reading research and literacy education, it is vital to clarify the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge in relation to reading abilities over children’s reading development. However, most existing research on this topic focused on either the starting point or the product of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, instead of the developmental trajectory over an extended period of time. To fill in this gap, the present study sought to reveal the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its association with reading abilities among Chinese children across elementary grades. This work recruited 149 Mandarin-Chinese-speaking, typically developing children from Mainland China, and they were followed up for six years from Grades 1 to 6. All participants were tested on a battery of reading-related tests for eight times (Time 1 to Time 8), and 117 children completed all tests from T1 to T8, thus in the final pool. Five testing time points had a 6-month interval (Time 1 to Time 5 were from the Fall semester of Grade 1 to the Fall semester of Grade3), and the subsequent three time points had a one-year interval (T6 to T8 were in the Fall semester from Grades 4 to 6). Children were assessed on their non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), orthographical awareness (OA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 8, and reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension at Time 8. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) the developmental trajectory of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge over time and (2) the predictive effects of the initial level (Time 1) and growth rates (Times 1-8) of oral vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at Time 8 while controlling for IQ, PA, MA, OA, and RAN measured at Time 1. Children’s oral vocabulary knowledge appeared to improve significantly, consistently over grades, and children’s initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linked to their growth rates over the years. The results of the conditional latent growth modeling showed that oral vocabulary knowledge made a significant, direct contribution to reading abilities, reading accuracy (initial status: B = 0.35, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.40, p < 0.001), reading fluency (initial status: B = 0.23, p = 0.037; growth rates: B = 0.27, p = 0.003), and reading comprehension (initial status: B = 0.39, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.48, p < 0.001). Overall, initial status and growth rates of oral vocabulary knowledge were stronger predictors of reading accuracy and reading comprehension than that of reading fluency, and the growth rate was a stronger predictor of reading abilities than the initial status. Our findings elucidate the developmental changes in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as clarify their unique, significant predictive power of reading abilities (reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension) in Chinese children from Grades 1 to 6. The findings shed light on the necessity of providing vocabulary learning opportunities for primary school children over their reading development.

  • The relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in Chinese elementary children:A cross-lagged study

    Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2019-05-13

    Abstract: " Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. According to the DVC (decoding, vocabulary, comprehension) reading skill triangle model (Perfetti, 2010), reading comprehension is dependent on knowing the meanings of words being read. At the same time, readers can infer the meanings of unfamiliar words encountered in reading. Therefore, a reciprocal relationship may exist between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, which is not documented in previous research. The aim of the present study is to examine the relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in different grades of elementary school. A total of 399 students from first, third and fifth grades were tested on vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension tasks at two time points over one year, along with phonological awareness, morphological awareness and nonverbal reasoning at Time 1 (the fall semester in grade 1, 3 and 5) as control variables. A cross-lagged model was used to investigate the relation between vocabulary and reading comprehension in each grade span. The results showed that, after controlling for phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and nonverbal reasoning, the relation between vocabulary and comprehension varied in different developmental stages. Vocabulary knowledge did not significantly predict later reading comprehension in primary grades (grade 1 to grade 2). Bidirectional predictive relation was found between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in middle grades (grade 3 to grade 4). Vocabulary knowledge in grade 5 did not predict later reading comprehension in grade 6, while reading comprehension in grade 5 significantly predicted later vocabulary knowledge in grade 6. The results support reading stage theory (Chall, 1983) and supplement the DVC reading skill triangle model (Perfetti, 2010). The relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese elementary children changes over time. The primary grades are in the stage of “learning to read”, children’s vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are mainly affected by the basic cognitive and linguistic skills. The reciprocal relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is evident in middle grades. The enrichment of vocabulary knowledge enables children to read skilled, and the comprehension of texts can also help children learn new words from texts. Reading comprehension plays an increasingly important role in vocabulary development from middle to upper elementary grades. These findings have implications for reading instruction in Chinese at different developmental stages.