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A Developmental Study of Chinese Children’s Word and Character Reading

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Abstract

To investigate the relationship between Chinese children’s character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children, younger children’s character reading was more likely to rely on the word that the character appeared in as a component; younger children made more errors in confusing the correct character with words related to it. Younger children’s greater rate of meaning-related errors also underscored the role of the word in their character learning. This study confirmed the important role of words in children’s character learning, and provided evidence for a developmental pattern of character and word reading in Chinese.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful that this research was supported by Collaborative Research Fund (CUHK: 2300035).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, SAR, People’s Republic of China

    Tong Li, Ying Wang & Catherine McBride

  2. Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Xiuhong Tong

Authors
  1. Tong Li
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  2. Ying Wang
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  3. Xiuhong Tong
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  4. Catherine McBride
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Catherine McBride.

Appendix

Appendix

Material for the experiment:

Single character reading material for third grade children

figure v

Word reading material for third grade children

figure w

Single character reading material for fifth grade children

figure x

Word reading material for fifth grade children

figure y

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Li, T., Wang, Y., Tong, X. et al. A Developmental Study of Chinese Children’s Word and Character Reading. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 141–155 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9429-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9429-z

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