Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive-linguistic predictors of reading and writing skills in Japanese where syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji are simultaneously used. We followed a sample of 170 Japanese children (Mage = 80.12 months, SD = 3.62) from the beginning of Grade 1 until the end of Grade 2 and assessed them on phonological awareness, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and Hiragana literacy skills (character recognition and writing) in Grade 1 and Kanji literacy skills in Grade 2. Results of path analysis showed that phonological awareness and rapid naming were associated with Hiragana literacy skills, which, in turn, predicted their counterparts in Kanji. In addition, morphological awareness predicted later Kanji literacy skills over and above the effects of early Hiragana literacy skills. Taken together, these findings suggest that the cognitive-linguistic foundations of literacy skills are not identical between Hiragana and Kanji and developing reading and writing skills in the two scripts may have a cross-script influence in literacy development.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Transfer is defined as the use of linguistic and cognitive knowledge acquired in language learning (Oldin, 1989).
Although “spelling” has been more commonly used for alphabetic orthographies, we use “writing” for both syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji in this paper for consistency purposes because the sequential phoneme-grapheme encoding is not involved in writing Kanji characters, and thus “spelling” may not be the most appropriate term for Kanji character writing.
References
Akamatsu, N. (2005). Literacy acquisition in Japanese-English bilinguals. In R. M. Joshi & P. G. Aaron (Eds.), Handbook of orthography and literacy (pp. 481–496). Routledge.
Araújo, S., Reis, A., Petersson, K. M., & Faísca, L. (2015). Rapid automatized naming and reading performance: a meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 868–883. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000006
Caravolas, M., Lervåg, A., Mousikou, P., Efrim, C., Litavsky, M., Onochie-Quintanilla, E., Salas, N., Schöffelová, M., Defior, S., Mikulajová, M., Seidlová-Málková, G., & Hulme, C. (2012). Common patterns of prediction of literacy development in different alphabetic orthographies. Psychological Science, 23, 678–686. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611434536
Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Chen, Y.-J.I., Thompson, C. G., Xu, Z., Irey, R. C., & Georgiou, G. K. (2021). Rapid automatized naming and spelling performance in alphabetic languages: a meta-analysis. Reading and Writing, 34, 2559–2580. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10160-7
Cheung, H., Chung, K. K. H., Wong, S.W.-L., McBride-Chang, C., Penney, T. B., & Ho, C.S.-H. (2010). Speech perception, metalinguistic awareness, reading, and vocabulary in Chinese-English bilingual children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 367–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017850
Cho, J.-R., & Lee, J.-Y. (2010). Transfer of phonological and morphological awareness to reading in English and logographic Hanja among Korean children. Journal of Cognitive Science, 11, 57–78. https://doi.org/10.17791/jcs.2010.11.1.57
Desrochers, A., Manolitsis, G., Gaudreau, P., & Georgiou, G. K. (2018). Early contribution of morphological awareness to literacy skills across languages varying in orthographic consistency. Reading and Writing, 31, 1695–1719. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9772-y
Ehri, L. C. (2000). Learning to read and learning to spell: Two sides of a coin. Topics in Language Disorders, 20, 191–236. https://doi.org/10.1097/00011363-200020030-00005
Ellis, N. C., Natsume, M., Stavropoulou, K., Hoxhallari, L., van Daal, V. H. P., Polyzoe, N., Maria-Louisa, T., & Petalas, M. (2004). The effects of orthographic depth on learning to read alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic scripts. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 438–468. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.39.4.5
Furnes, B., & Samuelsson, S. (2011). Phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming predicting early development in reading and spelling: Results from a cross-linguistic longitudinal study. Learning and Individual Differences, 21, 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2010.10.005
Georgiou, G. K., Liu, C., & Xu, S. (2017). Examining the direct and indirect effects of visual–verbal paired associate learning on Chinese word reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 160, 81–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.03.011
Georgiou, G. K., Parrila, R., & Papadopoulos, T. C. (2008). Predictors of word decoding and reading fluency across languages varying in orthographic consistency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 566–580. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.3.566
Georgiou, G. K., Torppa, M., Landerl, K., Desrochers, A., Manolitsis, G., de Jong, P. F., & Parrila, R. (2020). Reading and spelling development across languages varying in orthographic consistency: Do their paths cross? Child Development, 91, e266–e279. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13218
Georgiou, G. K., Torppa, M., Manolitsis, G., Lyytinen, H., & Parrila, R. (2012). Longitudinal predictors of reading and spelling across languages varying in orthographic consistency. Reading and Writing, 25, 321–346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9271-x
Graham, J. W. (2009). Missing data analysis: Making it work in the real world. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 549–576. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085530
Hamano, T., & Uchida, N. (2012). Cross-cultural study on the process of literacy acquisition and its relationship with environmental factors. Annual Report of Ochanomizu University Research Center for Human Development and Education, 4, 13–26. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10083/51285 (in Japanese)
Hamilton, L. G., Hayiou-Thomas, M. E., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2016). The home literacy environment as a predictor of the early literacy development of children at family-risk of dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 401–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1213266
Hanley, J. R. (2005). Learning to read in Chinese. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: a handbook (pp. 316–335). Blackwell.
Harm, M. W., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2004). Computing the meanings of words in reading: cooperative division of labor between visual and phonological processes. Psychological Review, 111, 662–720. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.111.3.662
Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Hayes, A. F., & Scharkow, M. (2013). The relative trustworthiness of inferential tests of the indirect effect in statistical mediation analysis. Psychological Science, 24, 1918–1927. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613480187
Inoue, T., Georgiou, G, K., Imanaka, H., Oshiro, T., Kitamura, H., Maekawa, H., & Parrila, R. (2019). Cross-script transfer of word reading fluency in a mixed writing system: Evidence from a longitudinal study in Japanese. Applied Psycholinguistics, 40, 235–251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271641800054
Inoue, T., Manolitsis, G., de Jong, P. F., Landerl, K., Parrila, R., & Georgiou, G. K. (2020). Home literacy environment and early literacy development across languages varying in orthographic consistency. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 1923. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01923
Inoue, T., Georgiou, G. K., Muroya, N., Maekawa, H., & Parrila, R. (2017). Cognitive predictors of literacy acquisition in syllabic Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. Reading and Writing, 30, 1335–1360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9726-4
Inoue, T., Georgiou, G. K., Muroya, N., Maekawa, H., & Parrila, R. (2018). Can earlier literacy skills have a negative impact on future home literacy activities? Evidence from Japanese. Journal of Research in Reading, 41, 159–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12109
Japan Foundation for Educational and Cultural Research. (1998). Kanji mastery levels for each graders at Japanese elementary school. Retrieved from http://www.jfecr.or.jp/publication/pub-data/kanji/index.html (in Japanese)
Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The reading process is different for different orthographies: the orthographic depth hypothesis. In R. Frost & L. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 67–84). Elsevier.
Kirby, J. R., & Bowers, P. N. (2017). Morphological instruction and literacy: binding phonological, orthographic, and semantic features of words. In K. Cain, D. Compton, & R. Parrila (Eds.), Theories of reading development (pp. 437–462). John Benjamins.
Kirby, J. R., Georgiou, G. K., Martinussen, R., & Parrila, R. (2010). Naming speed and reading: from prediction to instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 341–362. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.45.3.4
Kline, R. B. (2015). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (4th ed.). Guilford Press.
Kobayashi, M. S., Haynes, C. W., Macaruso, P., Hook, P. E., & Kato, J. (2005). Effects of mora deletion, nonword repetition, rapid naming, and visual search performance on beginning reading in Japanese. Annals of Dyslexia, 55, 105–128. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-005-0006-7
Koda, K. (2017). Learning to read Japanese. In L. Verhoeven & C. Perfetti (Eds.), Learning to read across languages and writing systems (pp. 31–56). Cambridge University Press.
Koyama, M. S., Hansen, P. C., & Stein, J. F. (2008). Logographic Kanji versus phonographic Kana in literacy acquisition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1145, 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1416.005
Kuo, L.- J., & Anderson, R. C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4103_3
Landerl, K., Castles, A., & Parrila, R. (2021). Cognitive precursors of reading: a cross-linguistic perspective. Scientific Studies of Reading. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2021.1983820
Landerl, K., Freudenthaler, H. H., Heene, M., de Jong, P. F., Desrochers, A., Manolitsis, G., Parrila, R., & Georgiou, G. K. (2019). Phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming as longitudinal predictors of reading in five alphabetic orthographies with varying degrees of consistency. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23, 220–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2018.1510936
Li, L., Wu, X., Cheng, Y., & Nguyen, T. P. (2019). The relationship of character reading and spelling: a longitudinal study in Chinese. Journal of Research in Reading, 42, 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12131
Li, T., McBride-Chang, C., Wong, A., & Shu, H. (2012). Longitudinal predictors of spelling and reading comprehension in Chinese as an L1 and English as an L2 in Hong Kong Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 286–301. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026445
Lin, D., Sun, H., & McBride, C. (2019). Morphological awareness predicts the growth rate of Chinese character reading. Developmental Science, 19, Article e12793. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12793
Liu, C., Chung, K. K. H., Wang, L.-C., & Liu, D. (2021). The relationship between paired associate learning and Chinese word reading in kindergarten children. Journal of Research in Reading, 44, 264–283. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12333
Maldarelli, J. E., Kahrs, B. A., Hunt, S. C., & Lockman, J. J. (2015). Development of early handwriting: visual-motor control during letter copying. Developmental Psychology, 51, 879–888. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039424
McBride-Chang, C., Tardif, T., Cho, J.-R., Shu, H., Fletcher, P., Stokes, S. F., Wong, A., & Leung, K. (2008). What’s in a word? Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in three languages. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 437–462. https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271640808020X
Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S.-A.H., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 322–352. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026744
Mikami, H., Nohara, Y., & Tanabe, M. (2008). Research on learning letters and reading readiness in early childhood. Bulletin of Nagoya University of Arts, 29, 345–365. (in Japanese).
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (2017). Shogakkou gakushu shidou yoryo [Course of Study]. Retrieved from https://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/education/micro_detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2019/03/18/1387017_002.pdf (in Japanese)
Moll, K., Ramus, F., Bartling, J., Bruder, J., Kunze, S., Neuhoff, N., Streiftau, S., Lyytinen, H., Leppänen, P. H. T., Lohvansuu, K., Tóth, D., Honbolygó, F., Csépe, V., Bogliotti, C., Iannuzzi, S., Démonet, J.-F., Longeras, E., Valdois, S., George, F., & Landerl, K. (2014). Cognitive mechanisms underlying reading and spelling development in five European orthographies. Learning and Instruction, 29, 65–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.09.003
Muroya, N., Inoue, T., Hosokawa, M., Georgiou, G. K., Maekawa, H., & Parrila, R. (2017). The role of morphological awareness in word reading skills in Japanese: a within-language cross-orthographic perspective. Scientific Studies of Reading, 21, 449–462. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-017-9726-4
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (1998–2017). Mplus (Version 8.5). Muthén & Muthén.
Nag, S. (2007). Early reading in Kannada: The pace of acquisition of orthographic knowledge and phonemic awareness. Journal of Research in Reading, 30, 7–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00329.x
O’Brien, B. A., Lim, N. C., Mohamed, M. B. H., & Arshad, N. A. (2020). Cross-lag analysis of early reading and spelling development for bilinguals learning English and Asian scripts. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 33, 1859–1891. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-019-09999-8
Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524537
Ogino, T., Hanafusa, K., Morooka, T., Takeuchi, A., Oka, M., & Ohtsuka, Y. (2017). Predicting the reading skill of Japanese children. Brain and Development, 39, 112–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.braindev.2016.08.006
Ota, S., Uno, A., & Inomata, T. (2018). Attainment level of hiragana reading/spelling in kindergarten children. Japan Journal of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, 59, 9–15. https://doi.org/10.5112/jjlp.59.9(inJapanese)
Pasquarella, A., Chen, X., Gottardo, A., & Geva, E. (2015). Cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English Bilinguals: script-universal and script-specific processes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 96–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036966
Plaut, D. C., McClelland, J. L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Patterson, K. (1996). Understanding normal and impaired word reading: computational principles in quasi-regular domains. Psychological Review, 103, 56–115. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.103.1.56
Ravid, D. (2012). Spelling morphology: The psycholinguistics of Hebrew spelling. Springer.
National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (1972). Reading and writing ability in pre-school children. Tokyo Shoseki. (in Japanese)
Ruan, Y., Georgiou, G. K., Song, S., Li, Y., & Shu, H. (2018). Does writing system influence the associations between phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110, 180–202. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000216
Seymour, P. H. K., Aro, M., & Erskine, J. M. (2003). Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143–174. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712603321661859
Shum, K.K.-M., Ho, C.S.-H., Siegel, L. S., & Au, T.K.-F. (2016). First-language longitudinal predictors of second-language literacy in young L2 learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 51, 323–344. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.139
Smith, J. S. (1996). Japanese writing. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.), The world’s writing systems (pp. 209–217). Oxford University Press.
Song, S., Georgiou, G., Su, M.-M., & Shu, H. (2016). How well do phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming correlate with reading accuracy and fluency in Chinese? A meta-analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 99–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2015.1088543
Sparks, R. L., Patton, J., Ganschow, L., Humbach, N., & Javorsky, J. (2008). Early first-language reading and spelling skills predict later second-language reading and spelling skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 162–174. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.1.162
Sun, X., Zhang, K., Marks, R. A., Nickerson, N., Eggleston, R. L., Yu, C., Chou, T., Tardif, T., & Kovelman, I. (2022). What’s in a word? Cross-linguistic influences on Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilingual children’s word reading development. Child Development, 93, 84–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13666
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2012). Using multivariate statistics (6th ed.). Pearson.
Takahashi, N. (2001). Developmental changes in reading ability: A longitudinal analysis of Japanese children from first to fifth grade. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 49, 1–10. Retrieved from https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjep1953/49/1/49_1/_pdf/-char/ja (in Japanese)
Tamaoka, K., & Taft, M. (2010). The sensitivity of native Japanese speakers to On and Kun kanji readings. Reading and Writing, 23, 957–968. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9184-8
Tanji, T., & Inoue, T. (2021). Early prediction of reading development in Japanese hiragana and kanji: a longitudinal study from kindergarten to grade 1. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10197-8
Taylor, I., & Taylor, M. (2014). Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese: Studies in written language and literacy 14 (2nd ed.). John Benjamins.
Vaessen, A., & Blomert, L. (2013). The cognitive linkage and divergence of spelling and reading development. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17, 89–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2011.614665
Xu, Z., Liu, D., & Joshi, R. M. (2020). The influence of sensory-motor components of handwriting on Chinese character learning in second- and fourth-grade Chinese children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112, 1353–1366. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000443
Yang, J., Shu, H., McCandliss, B. D., & Zevin, J. D. (2013). Orthographic influences on division of labor in learning to read Chinese and English: Insights from computational modeling. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 354–366. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728912000296
Ye, Y., Yan, M., Ruan, Y., McBride, C., Zheng, M., & Yin, L. (2022). Exploring the underpinnings and longitudinal associations of word reading and word spelling: A 2-year longitudinal study of Hong Kong Chinese children transitioning to primary school. Scientific Studies of Reading, 26, 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2021.1871909
Zhang, D. (2017). Word reading in L1 and L2 learners of Chinese: Similarities and differences in the functioning of component processes. The Modern Language Journal, 101, 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12392
Ziegler, J. C., Bertrand, D., Toth, D., Csépe, V., Reis, A., Faisca, L., Saine, N., Lyytinen, H., Vaessen, A., & Blomert, L. (2010). Orthographic depth and its impact on universal predictors of reading: a cross-language investigation. Psychological Science, 21, 551–559. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610363406
Funding
This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18K13223) to Tomohiro Inoue.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendices
Appendix A
Test Items of the Hiragana Character Recognition Task
No | Item | No | Item | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | し | 26 | べ | |
2 | の | 27 | ぷ | |
3 | ひ | 28 | げ | |
4 | た | 29 | じ | |
5 | う | 30 | ぐ | |
6 | い | 31 | りゃ | |
7 | お | 32 | びゅ | |
8 | こ | 33 | ちょ | |
9 | か | 34 | ぴゅ | |
10 | も | 35 | じゃ | |
11 | ぞ | 36 | ぴょ | |
12 | ほ | 37 | きゅ | |
13 | び | 38 | みゃ | |
14 | ぬ | 39 | にょ | |
15 | づ | 40 | ぎゃ | |
16 | ぽ | 41 | ぴょ | |
17 | ぶ | 42 | びゅ | |
18 | ぴ | 43 | ぎょ | |
19 | ざ | 44 | ちゃ | |
20 | ぺ | 45 | じゅ | |
21 | ぎ | 46 | ぴゃ | |
22 | ば | 47 | しゅ | |
23 | ぜ | 48 | ひゅ | |
24 | ぼ | 49 | ぎゅ | |
25 | ぱ | 50 | きょ |
Appendix B
Test Items of the Hiragana Writing Task
No | Item |
|---|---|
1 | し |
2 | い |
3 | こ |
4 | ぶ |
5 | ぽ |
6 | ぷ |
7 | ちゃ |
8 | しゅ |
9 | しょ |
10 | ゆび |
11 | にわ |
12 | しゃしん |
13 | なっとう |
14 | うんどうかい |
15 | しんかんせん |
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Inoue, T., Georgiou, G.K. & Parrila, R. Cross-script effects of cognitive-linguistic skills on Japanese Hiragana and Kanji: Evidence from a longitudinal study. J Cult Cogn Sci 6, 119–134 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-022-00099-8
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-022-00099-8