title: Predicting the naming of regular-, irregular- and non-phonetic compounds in Chinese.
abstract: This study investigated the contributions of different cognitive measures in predicting the three types of Chinese characters: regular phonetic compounds, irregular phonetic compounds and non-phonetic compounds. A total of 246 Grade 3 children (mean age = 8.63 yrs) were tested using a bunch of tasks including phonological processing, orthographic processing, morphological processing, rapid automatised naming and Chinese character naming. Results showed that advanced phonological processing skills contributed largely to regular phonetic compounds naming while other cognitive measures predict the naming of the other two types of characters. The results imply that the skills underlying the learning of regular phonetic compounds are different from that of irregular phonetic compounds and non-phonetic compounds, which are similar. Data from three poor readers whose performances pattern on naming different types of Chinese characters agreed with the pattern predicted by their performances in different cognitive tasks provide further support to the claim. Theoretical and pedagogical implications were discussed.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies , Hong Kong Polytechnic University , Hong Kong .
authors.forename: Dustin Kai-Yan
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.forename: Man-Tak
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Leung
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Jason Chor Ming
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Lo
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011932:Reading; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Chinese; language; psycholinguistics; reading