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Advantage in Character Recognition Among Chinese Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Abstract

This study examined Chinese character recognition and its cognitive and linguistic correlates in preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Forty-seven children with ASD and 51 IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children were tested on Chinese character recognition, rapid automatized naming, inhibitory control, digit span, IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and listening comprehension. Chinese children with ASD showed strong character recognition skills. Unlike TD children’s character recognition, which was correlated with all the measured cognitive and linguistic skills, character recognition of children with ASD was only significantly correlated with rapid automatized naming, inhibitory control, and phonological awareness. Our findings suggest that phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming may serve as important predictors for possible advantage in emergent literacy acquisition in Chinese children with ASD.

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Notes

  1. The standardized non-verbal IQ scores were established only for children over 5 years old. Children under five in this study therefore did not get the standardized score. The standardized non-verbal IQ scores for TD children and children with ASD over 5 years old were 98.5 and 74.9, respectively. Children under 5 years old consitituted 51% of the TD children and 39.1% of children with ASD.

  2. TEACCH refers to a framework that offers structured support for social communication using visual and/or written information to supplement verbal communication.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all children and their parents who participated in this study.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [13CYY027] and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [15000-31620003] to the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou, China

    Jing Zhao

  2. Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

    Si Chen

  3. Human Communication, Development, and Information Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Xiuli Tong

  4. School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences & Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing, China

    Li Yi

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  1. Jing Zhao
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  2. Si Chen
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  3. Xiuli Tong
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  4. Li Yi
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Contributions

JZ and LY developed the study concept. All four authors contributed to the study design and SC analyzed the data. Testing and data collection were performed by JZ and LY. JZ drafted the manuscript, and XT provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

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Correspondence to Jing Zhao or Li Yi.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Zhao, J., Chen, S., Tong, X. et al. Advantage in Character Recognition Among Chinese Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 4929–4940 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04202-x

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