Exploring the Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, and Vocabulary Among Chinese-English Bilingual Children: The Moderating Role of Second Language Instruction.

This study investigated the associations among bilingual phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary by focusing on their genetic and environmental etiologies. It also explored the influence of family socio-economic status (SES) and language exposure amount on the genetic and environmental effects. A twin study was conducted with 349 pairs of Chinese-English bilingual twins (mean age = 7.37 years). Cross-language transfer was found in phonological and morphological awareness but not in vocabulary knowledge. A common genetic overlap was found among these bilingual abilities. We also found a common shared environmental effect that may account for the cross-language transfer in phonological awareness and the associations among English abilities. SES and language exposure were significant environmental influences on bilingual phonological awareness and English vocabulary. More teaching in Chinese was related to a stronger genetic effect on Chinese morphological awareness, whereas more teaching in English was related to a stronger environmental impact on English abilities.

Executive functions in Chinese kindergarten children with early reading problems.

Learning to read Chinese is a complex task that draws on a range of executive function (EF) skills since early development. However, no studies have examined EF as a potential contributing factor to early reading problems among Chinese children. The present longitudinal study identified 48 poor readers and 48 normal readers among a sample of 190 Chinese children at the end of kindergarten. Measures of EF skills (working memory, inhibition control, and cognitive flexibility) and reading outcomes (word reading, sentence reading fluency, and sentence reading comprehension) were administered to the children. The two groups were retrospectively compared on the EF measures after age and nonverbal IQ were considered. Poor readers were found to perform significantly worse than normal readers in all the examined EF skills. Correlation and regression results revealed a relatively different nature of the relationship between EF and reading in poor readers as compared with normal readers. Inhibition control predicted reading outcomes in poor readers only, while cognitive flexibility predicted reading outcomes in normal readers only. Working memory was significantly correlated to word reading in poor readers and to reading comprehension in normal readers. The results are discussed in terms of the special characteristics of the Chinese language.

Reciprocal effects of morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and word reading: A cross-lagged panel analysis in Chinese.

There are strong correspondences among syllable, morpheme, and orthographic representations in Chinese. For this reason, bidirectional relationships have been hypothesized among morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and word reading from an early age. Our study examined the reciprocity of these skills among Hong Kong Chinese primary school children. Data were collected from 160 first graders at two time points and were analyzed using a cross-lagged panel design with the three skills modeled simultaneously. No reciprocal pathways were demonstrated in the model; instead, unidirectional relationships emerged. Morphological awareness facilitated later word reading, and word reading facilitated later vocabulary knowledge. Results are discussed in relation to a developmental account of learning to read in Chinese.

Effect of Twinning on Chinese and English Vocabulary Knowledge.

Vocabulary knowledge was tested in a native (Cantonese-Chinese) and foreign (English) language in 150 twins and 150 singletons aged 6-11 years, matched on age, gender, grade level, nonverbal intelligence, parents' education, family income, and number of siblings and household members. The singletons clearly outperformed the twins on the native vocabulary, but this "twinning effect" was much less noticeable for the foreign vocabulary. The effect on English vocabulary was further reduced after exposure to English at home was controlled. Given that these participants learned most of their English in school rather than home, the present findings support the notion that the twinning effect is associated with increased competition for family interaction in twins compared with singletons.

Event-related potentials during Chinese single-character and two-character word reading in children.

Word reading involves a series of cognitive processes, from lower-level visual processing to word semantic retrieval. To investigate the timing of the underlying neurocognitive processes in reading, the current study examined the electrophysiological correlates of cognitive functions associated with traditional Chinese word reading in Hong Kong children (Age: M = 8.19, SD = 0.82 years old) using event-related potentials (ERPs). A single-character lexical decision task and a two-character word lexical decision task were used to explore different levels of Chinese word processing. One-hundred ten children's data were analyzed. Results revealed that radical level processing was related to a P1 component at as early as 130 ms. Character-level processing was related to an N1 component from 218 ms onwards. Two-character word semantic processing was related to an N400-like component at as early as 450 ms. The results show a similar time course of visual word processing as previously reported in alphabetic languages, consistent with increasing specialization in the ventral visual stream for increasing wordlikeness leading to processing of linguistic aspects in higher-level language regions.

Reading Comprehension Difficulties in Chinese-English Bilingual Children.

The co-occurrence of reading comprehension difficulties for first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English and associated longitudinal cognitive-linguistic correlates in each language were investigated. Sixteen poor comprehenders in English and 16 poor comprehenders in Chinese, 18 poor readers in both, and 18 children with normal performance in both were identified at age 10. The prevalence rate for being poor in both was 52.94%, suggesting that approximately half of children who are at risk for Chinese reading comprehension difficulty are also at risk for English reading comprehension difficulty. Chinese word reading, phonological, and morphological awareness were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in Chinese. English word reading and vocabulary were longitudinal correlates of poor comprehension in English. Chinese phonological awareness was an additional correlate of poor comprehension in English. Moreover, poor comprehenders in both Chinese and English showed slower rapid automatized naming scores than the other groups. Findings highlight some factors that might be critical for reading comprehension in L1 Chinese and L2 English; fluency is likely to be a critical part of reading comprehension across languages. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Adequacy of Using a Three-Item Questionnaire to Determine Zygosity in Chinese Young Twins.

The present study examined the adequacy of a three-item parent questionnaire in determining the zygosity of young Chinese twins and whether there was any association between parent response accuracy and some demographic variables. The sample consisted of 334 pairs of same-sex Chinese twins aged from 3 to 11 years. Three scoring methods, namely the summed score, logistic regression, and decision tree, were employed to evaluate parent response accuracy of twin zygosity based on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information. The results showed that all three methods achieved high level of accuracy ranging from 91 to 93 % which was comparable to the accuracy rates in previous Chinese twin studies. Correlation results also showed that the higher the parents' education level or the family income was, the more likely parents were able to tell correctly that their twins are identical or fraternal. The present findings confirmed the validity of using a three-item parent questionnaire to determine twin zygosity in a Chinese school-aged twin sample.

Less is More in Hong Kong: Investigation of Biscriptal and Trilingual Development Among Chinese Twins in a (Relatively) Small City.

One salient characteristic of twin studies and the related behavioral genetics paradigm is the requirement of a large sample size. Countries or regions that are large in size and highly populated are at an advantage when implementing twin studies. However, given the fascinating and promising results obtained from twin studies, many researchers based in smaller countries or regions may still want to conduct twin studies in order to address local and theoretical issues. In this article, we have outlined the development of twin studies in Hong Kong, one of the Special Administrative Regions of China. The historical development and design of the two major twin studies of language and reading development implemented within Hong Kong are discussed, providing insights to researchers who also aspire to conduct twin studies in small regions.

Home environmental influences on children's language and reading skills in a genetically sensitive design: Are socioeconomic status and home literacy environment environmental mediators and moderators?

This twin study examined how family socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE) contributes to Chinese language and reading skills. It included 312 Chinese twin pairs aged 3 to 11. Children were individually administered tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary and reading-related cognitive skills, and nonverbal reasoning ability. Information on home environment was collected through parent-reported questionnaires. Results showed that SES and HLE mediated shared environmental influences but did not moderate genetic influences on general language and reading abilities. Also, SES and HLE mediated shared environmental contributions to receptive vocabulary and syllable and rhyme awareness, but not orthographic skills. The findings of this study add to past twin studies that focused on alphabetic languages, suggesting that these links could be universal across languages. They also extend existing findings on SES and HLE's contributions to reading-related cognitive skills.

Understanding the Microstructure and Macrostructure of Passages Among Chinese Elementary School Children.

Understanding the microstructure and macrostructure of passages is important for reading comprehension. What cognitive-linguistic skills may contribute to understanding these two levels of structures has rarely been investigated. The present study examined whether some word-level and text-level cognitive-linguistic skills may contribute differently to the understanding of microstructure and macrostructure respectively. Seventy-nine Chinese elementary school children were tested on some cognitive-linguistic skills and literacy skills. It was found that word reading fluency and syntactic skills predicted significantly the understanding of microstructure of passages after controlling for age and IQ; while morphological awareness, syntactic skills, and discourse skills contributed significantly to understanding of macrostructure. These findings suggest that syntactic skills facilitate children's access of meaning from grammatical structures, which is a fundamental process in gaining text meaning at any level of reading comprehension. Discourse skills also allow readers to understand the cohesive interlinks within and between sentences and is important for a macro level of passage understanding.

A common haplotype of KIAA0319 contributes to the phonological awareness skill in Chinese children.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that KIAA0319 is a candidate gene for dyslexia in western populations. In view of the different languages used in Caucasian and Chinese populations, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether there is also an association of KIAA0319 in Chinese children with dyslexia and/or to the language-related cognitive skills. METHOD AND RESULTS: A total of twenty six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped from three hundred and ninety three individuals from 131 Chinese families. Four of the SNPs have been reported in the literature and twenty two being tag SNPs at KIAA0319. Analysis for allelic and haplotypic associations was performed with the UNPHASED program and multiple testing was corrected using permutation. Results indicate that KIAA0319 is not associated with Chinese children with dyslexia but a haplotype consisting of rs2760157 and rs807507 SNPs were significantly associated with an onset detection test, a measure of phonological awareness (pnominal = 6.85 10-5 and pcorrected = 0.0029). CONCLUSION: In conclusion, our findings suggest that KIAA0319 is associated with a reading-related cognitive skill.

Weaknesses in semantic, syntactic and oral language expression contribute to reading difficulties in Chinese dyslexic children.

The present study examined the role of weaknesses in some language skills for the reading difficulties among Chinese dyslexic children. Thirty Chinese dyslexic children were compared with 30 chronological age (CA) controls and 30 reading-level (RL) controls on a number of language and reading measures. The results showed that Chinese dyslexic children performed significantly worse than the CA controls but similarly to the RL controls in many of the linguistic measures except that the dyslexic group also performed significantly less well than the RL group in semantic skills and syntactic skills on multiple modifiers. The dyslexic children were found to have difficulties in semantic processing, syntactic skills and oral language expression as compared with the CA controls, which were also found to predict their performance in word recognition and/or sentence comprehension. In addition, measures of semantic discrimination, advanced syntactic word order, and oral narrative also significantly predicted the group membership of having or not having dyslexia. These findings suggest that weaknesses in some semantic and advanced syntactic skills are the potential source of poor word and sentence reading in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Implications of the present findings for the identification of dyslexia were discussed.

What are the early indicators of persistent word reading difficulties among Chinese readers in elementary grades?

To identify the indicators of persistent reading difficulties among Chinese readers in early elementary grades, the performance of three groups of Chinese children with different reading trajectories ('persistent poor word readers', 'improved poor word readers' and 'skilled word readers') in reading-related measures was analysed in a 3-year longitudinal study. The three groups were classified according to their performance in a standardized Chinese word reading test in Grade 1 and Grade 4. Results of analysis of variance and logistic regression on the reading-related measures revealed that rapid naming and syntactic skills were important indicators of early word reading difficulty. Syntactic skills and morphological awareness were possible markers of persistent reading problems. Chinese persistent poor readers did not differ significantly from skilled readers on the measures of phonological skills.

Generalist genes and cognitive abilities in Chinese twins.

This study considered how far nonverbal cognitive, language and reading abilities are affected by common genetic influences in a sample of 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. Factor analyses on the verbal tasks adjusted for age indicated two factors: Language as the first factor and Reading as the second factor. Univariate genetic analyses indicated that genetic influences were substantial for nonverbal cognitive ability and moderate for language and reading. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that nonverbal cognitive ability, language and reading were influenced by shared genetic origins, although there were specific genetic influences on verbal skills that were distinct from those on nonverbal cognitive ability. This study extends the Generalist Genes Hypothesis to Chinese language and reading skills, suggesting that the general effects of genes could be universal across languages.

Predicting the developmental trajectories of Chinese reading, English reading, and mathematics: Evidence from Hong Kong Chinese children.

We examined the developmental trajectories and cognitive predictors of first language Chinese reading, second language English reading, and mathematics skills in Hong Kong children in Grades 1-5. We used longitudinal data of 1,000 children (Mage = 7.59 years) assessed on phonological awareness, rapid naming, and morphological awareness in Grade 1 and Chinese word reading, English word reading, and arithmetic calculations in Grades 1-5. Results revealed a decelerating growth pattern for word reading in Chinese and English and a linear growth pattern for arithmetic calculations. Rapid naming and morphological awareness predicted the initial status of all academic skills. The findings suggest that although these academic skills share initial cognitive processes, they follow remarkably different developmental trajectories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading fluency as the bridge between decoding and reading comprehension in Chinese children.

Purpose: Reading fluency has been considered an essential component of reading comprehension, but it is yet to be examined in a reading model in a non-alphabetic writing system. This study investigated whether reading fluency could be identified as a separate construct from decoding and examined the unique role of reading fluency in the Simple View of Reading (SVR). Method: A total of 342 Cantonese-speaking Chinese children in grades 3-5 were recruited to participate in the study. They were assessed on word reading accuracy and fluency, morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis results confirmed that reading fluency is a separate factor from decoding, linguistic comprehension, and reading comprehension. Furthermore, the structural equation modeling results revealed that reading fluency is a significant predictor of reading comprehension and a mediator between decoding and reading comprehension in the extended SVR model. Conclusion: The findings extended previous research in alphabetic languages and supported reading fluency as the bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. The present study highlighted the importance of reading fluency in Chinese reading acquisition in a theoretical framework.

Early difficulties of Chinese preschoolers at familial risk for dyslexia: deficits in oral language, phonological processing skills, and print-related skills.

The present study examined some early performance difficulties of Chinese preschoolers at familial risk for dyslexia. Seventy-six high-risk (40 good and 36 poor readers) and 25 low-risk Chinese children were tested on oral language, reading-related cognitive skills (e.g. phonological processing skills, rapid naming, and morphological awareness), and Chinese word reading and spelling over a 3-year period. The parents were also given a behaviour checklist for identifying child at-risk behaviours. Results showed that the High Risk (Poor Reading) group performed significantly worse than the Low Risk and the High Risk (Good Reading) group on most of the measures and domains. More children in the High Risk (Poor Reading) group displayed at-risk behaviours than in the other two groups. These results suggest that Chinese at-risk children with early difficulties in reading and spelling do show a wide range of language-, phonology-, and print-related deficits, similar to their alphabetic counterparts. An understanding of these early difficulties may help prevent dyslexia from developing in at-risk children.

Resting state EEG network modularity predicts literacy skills in L1 Chinese but not in L2 English.

EEG network modularity, as a proxy for cognitive plasticity, has been proposed to be a more reliable neural marker than power and coherence in predicting learning outcomes. The present study examined the associations between resting state EEG network modularity and both L1 Chinese and L2 English literacy skills among 90 Hong Kong first to fifth graders. The modularity indices of different frequency bands were highly correlated with one another. An exploratory factor analysis, performed to extract a general modularity index, explained 77.1% of the total variance. The modularity index was positively associated with Chinese word reading, Chinese phonological awareness, Chinese morphological awareness, and Chinese reading comprehension but was not significantly correlated with English word reading or English morphological awareness. Findings suggest that resting state EEG network modularity is likely to serve as a reasonable, reliable, and cost-effective neural marker of the development of first language but not second language literacy skills.

The cognitive profile of Chinese children with mathematics difficulties.

This study examined how four domain-specific skills (arithmetic procedural skills, number fact retrieval, place value concept, and number sense) and two domain-general processing skills (working memory and processing speed) may account for Chinese children's mathematics learning difficulties. Children with mathematics difficulties (MD) of two age groups (7-8 and 9-11 years) were compared with age-matched typically achieving children. For both age groups, children with MD performed significantly worse than their age-matched controls on all of the domain-specific and domain-general measures. Further analyses revealed that the MD children with literacy difficulties (MD/RD group) performed the worst on all of the measures, whereas the MD-only group was significantly outperformed by the controls on the four domain-specific measures and verbal working memory. Stepwise discriminant analyses showed that both number fact retrieval and place value concept were significant factors differentiating the MD and non-MD children. To conclude, deficits in domain-specific skills, especially those of number fact retrieval and place value understanding, characterize the profile of Chinese children with MD.

Cognitive profiles of Chinese adolescents with dyslexia.

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia and examined the cognitive profile of dyslexic adolescents in order to better understand this important problem. The performance of 27 Chinese adolescents with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia was compared with 27 adolescents of the same chronological age (CA) and 27 of matched reading level (RL) on measures of literacy and cognitive abilities: Chinese word reading, one-minute reading, reading comprehension, dictation, verbal short-term memory, rapid naming, visual-orthographic knowledge, morphological and phonological awareness. The results indicated that the dyslexic group scored lower than the CA group, but similar to the RL group, especially in the areas of rapid naming, visual-orthographic knowledge and morphological awareness, with over half having multiple deficits exhibited 2 or more cognitive areas. Furthermore, the number of cognitive deficits was associated with the degree of reading and spelling impairment. These findings suggest that adolescents with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia have persistent literacy difficulties and seem to have multiple causes for reading difficulties in Chinese.