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The role of visual and auditory temporal processing for Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

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Abstract

This study examined temporal processing in relation to Chinese reading acquisition and impairment. The performances of 26 Chinese primary school children with developmental dyslexia on tasks of visual and auditory temporal order judgement, rapid naming, visual-orthographic knowledge, morphological, and phonological awareness were compared with those of 26 reading level ability controls (RL) and 26 chronological age controls (CA). Dyslexic children performed worse than the CA group but similar to the RL group on measures of accurate processing of auditory and visual-order stimuli, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and phonological awareness and a minority performed worse on the two temporal processing tasks. However, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that visual but not auditory temporal processing contributed unique variance to Chinese character recognition even with other cognitive measures controlled, suggesting it may be as important a correlate of reading ability in Chinese as in alphabetic scripts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Psychology, Counselling and Learning Needs, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong, China

    Kevin K. H. Chung

  2. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Catherine McBride-Chang & Him Cheung

  3. The Oxford University, Oxford, England

    Simpson W. L. Wong

  4. The National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Trevor B. Penney

  5. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Connie S.-H. Ho

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  1. Kevin K. H. Chung
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  2. Catherine McBride-Chang
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  3. Simpson W. L. Wong
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  4. Him Cheung
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  6. Connie S.-H. Ho
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Correspondence to Kevin K. H. Chung.

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This research was supported by a Competitive Earmarked Research Grant to Kevin K.H. Chung from University Grants Committee (HKIED 8402/05H). The authors thank editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to improve the manuscript. Also, we thank all of the students who participated in this study, Mrs Sue Lea, the teachers, and the school principals for their time, valuable assistance, and support.

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Chung, K.K.H., McBride-Chang, C., Wong, S.W.L. et al. The role of visual and auditory temporal processing for Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. Ann. of Dyslexia 58, 15–35 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-008-0015-4

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