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Component skills of text comprehension in less competent Chinese comprehenders

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Abstract

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span and tongue-twister), two-character Chinese pseudoword reading (two tasks), rapid automatized naming (RAN) (letters and numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 31 less competent comprehenders compared with 37 reading comprehension control students and 23 chronological age controls. It was hypothesized that the target students would perform poorly on these cognitive and linguistic tasks as compared with their controls. Furthermore, verbal working memory and pseudoword reading would explain a considerable amount of individual variation in Chinese text comprehension. RAN would have a nonsignificant role in text comprehension. Structural equation analyses and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld these hypotheses. Our findings support current literature of the role of verbal working memory in reading comprehension found in English. The results, however, suggest differential role of the constructs and the tasks in reading comprehension and provide some answers for comprehension impairment in Chinese students.

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Acknowledgment

The authors thank the children, their parents and teachers in the two schools in Hong Kong for their participation in the project and the research assistants for their work with the children. The first author is also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support through SSHRC research grant 410-01-0059. The second authors thanks CUHK and the third and fourth authors thank HKU for their support. The Associate Editor Dr. Virginia Mann has been the action editor throughout the review process for this manuscript. We thank her and the three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Psychology & Special Education, University of Saskatchewan, 28 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Sask, S7N 0X1, Canada

    Che Kan Leong

  2. Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Che Kan Leong & Kit Tai Hau

  3. Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Shek Kam Tse & Ka Yee Loh

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  1. Che Kan Leong
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Correspondence to Che Kan Leong.

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This manuscript was submitted under the editorship of the immediate past editor Dr. Che Kan Leong. This manuscript was peer reviewed, processed, and accepted by associate editor Dr. Virginia A. Mann.

(Appendix. Sample Chinese items with some English translations)

(Appendix. Sample Chinese items with some English translations)

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Leong, C.K., Hau, K.T., Tse, S.K. et al. Component skills of text comprehension in less competent Chinese comprehenders. Ann. of Dyslexia 57, 75–97 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-007-0004-z

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