Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2023-09-27
Abstract： Reading is important for children’s future academic success. Clarifying the mechanisms underlying reading ability has been a heated issue in reading research for decades. Most previous studies have focused solely on reading comprehension but scarcely paid attention to the mechanisms underlying reading fluency throughout elementary school. Reading fluency at the text level has been acknowledged as one of the indicators of children’s overall reading competence. Therefore, the present study aimed to clarify the shareability and specificity of the mechanisms underlying Chinese children’s reading comprehension and reading fluency across different developmental stages.
We recruited a total of 416 Chinese children in grades 2, 4 and 6 (lower, middle and upper stages) of elementary school and were then followed up for half a year. In the fall semester (Time 1), a series of tasks, including general cognitive ability; working memory; phonological, orthographic and morphological awareness; rapid automatized naming (RAN); word recognition accuracy; word recognition fluency and vocabulary knowledge, were administered. In the second or spring semester (Time 2), reading comprehension and reading fluency were administered. Three mediation models were fitted to the data with T1 morphological awareness and RAN as predictors, T1 word recognition accuracy, word recognition fluency, and vocabulary knowledge as mediators and T2 reading comprehension and reading fluency as outcomes. The remaining variables were controlled in all the three models.
Results indicated that morphological awareness and RAN significantly predicted reading comprehension and reading fluency at T2 via word recognition accuracy among children in the lower stage after controlling for the effects of T1 general cognitive ability, T1 working memory and T1 phonological and orthographic awareness. The mediating effect of T1 word recognition fluency in the contribution of T1 RAN to T2 reading fluency was also significant. However, in the middle and upper stages, the indirect effects of T1 morphological awareness and T1 RAN on T2 reading comprehension were not significant; for T2 reading fluency, the mediating role of T1 word recognition accuracy in the effect of T1 morphological awareness was significant in both stages, but the mediated role of T1 word recognition fluency was only significant in the middle stage. Moreover, T1 RAN contributed to it via T1 word recognition accuracy and fluency.
These findings attest to both the shareability and specificity in the mechanisms underlying reading comprehension and reading fluency across different developmental stages. These findings suggest that reading fluency should be incorporated as a legitimate index of children’s reading ability. They further imply that the developmental stages require consideration when exploring the mechanisms underlying the effects of morphological awareness and RAN on reading abilities (comprehension and fluency). This study provides empirical evidence for understanding the science of reading development among Chinese children and has important implications for future reading research and educational intervention.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The auditory channel is disabled for people who are deaf and hard of hearing, so they have to rely heavily on visual language — lip-reading and sign language — to develop their reading ability. Lip-reading can help deaf and hard-of-hearing people to form phonological representation, develop vocabulary knowledge, and promote word reading and reading comprehension. Oral and written language processing activates sign language, which affects all levels of reading ability for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Future research should explore the role of reading skills such as phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in the effect of visual language on reading ability, and develop a theoretical model that explains the mechanisms underlying reading acquisition by visual language for Chinese people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Auditory vocabulary recognition involves complex cognitive processing. Blind people have been reported to exhibit specific advantages in auditory vocabulary processing. However, because of the lack of visual experience, blind people exhibit weaker semantic processing and understanding of some vision-related words (such as color words) compared with individuals with normal vision. Future research should focus on the following issues: examining the visual relevance of vocabulary recognition; carrying out in-depth explorations of cognitive and neurophysiological processing mechanisms at different levels, including phonology, orthography, and semantics; developing auditory vocabulary processing models that reflect the characteristics of blind people's perception; and expanding developmental studies with people of different ages. Taken together, this research may be useful for revealing the mechanisms underlying the influence of blindness on auditory vocabulary recognition among blind people.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The oral vocabulary knowledge is a crucial factor for language development and school success for children, and develops rapidly in childhood. The present study was aimed to extend our current understanding of oral vocabulary knowledge development, at first by examining its growth from grades 1 to 3. Based on such findings, further question was asked about how to explain the individual differences in the growth rate of oral vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, the current research also investigated the additive effects of family socioeconomic status (SES), children’s phonological awareness, homograph awareness and compounding awareness on initial levels and growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge. Participants were 149 children in grade one, who were followed up for three years from grade one entering to grade three. They were assessed on phonological awareness, homograph awareness, and compounding awareness at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 5. Family socioeconomic status was obtained from parents of these children. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) children’s initial levels and growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge over time; and (2) the predictive effects of family SES, phonological awareness, homograph awareness, and compounding awareness on both initial levels and growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge. Unconditional latent growth modeling analyses revealed that children’s oral vocabulary knowledge increased in a non-linear trajectory during the follow-up period. In specific, (1) children showed individual differences in the initial levels and growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge. (2) the initial level of oral vocabulary knowledge was not related to later growth rate. Conditional latent growth modeling was examined with family SES, phonological awareness, homograph awareness, and compounding awareness as time-invariant predictors on both initial levels and growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge. It was found that (1) children who have higher level of phonological awareness, homograph awareness, and compounding awareness had higher initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge than others did (β = 0.15, p < 0.05; β = 0.28, p < 0.001; β = 0.20, p < 0.05, respectively); (2) Family SES significantly predicted the initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge (β = 0.35, p < 0.001); (3) Growth rate in oral vocabulary knowledge was predicted significantly by family SES (β = 0.26, p < 0.05) and children’s homograph awareness (β = 0.30, p < 0.01), respectively. The present findings have an important role in elucidating developmental changes of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge. It also highlights the predictive role of family SES, phonological awareness, homograph awareness, and compounding awareness in oral vocabulary development. More importantly, in the consideration of our findings that family SES and homograph awareness at Time 1 could predict growth rate in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge from T1 to T5. To improve the oral vocabulary knowledge for children, teachers need to pay special attention to children’s homograph awareness.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Evidences accumulated in the past decades have documented that reading-related cognitive skills, such as phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness, play an importance role on Chinese children’s language and literacy development. The characteristics of Chinese, including its relatively simple phonological system, the almost perfectly consistent one to one to one correspondences among morpheme, character, and syllable, the predominant compounding structure of words, the great number of homophones and homographs, all make morphological awareness salient for Chinese literacy development. The structure of morphological awareness varies in different language systems. The comprehensive model of Chinese morphological awareness assumes three components: compounding awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness. Studies on the development of Chinese reading suggested that the morphological awareness is more important for reading comprehension than both phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. However, the mechanism underlying this phenonenon remains less clear. This longitudinal study examined the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. A two-year and four-wave cross-lagged design was used with a sample of 149 Chinese children (80 male and 69 female). We measured children’s morphological awareness from T1 to T4, word reading fluency and reading comprehension from T2 to T4. In addition, we also measured the general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming at T1 as control measures. A longitudinal cross-lagged panel model was conducted to investigate the role of morphological awareness in the reading comprehension and whether word reading fluency would mediate the association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, when controlling for general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming at T1, and the auto-regression. The present results showed that (1) the morphological awareness (compounding awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness), word reading fluency, and reading comprehension increased with time. (2) The cross-lagged paths from the morphological awareness at T1 to reading comprehension at T2 (standardized β = 0.24, p < 0.01), from the morphological awareness at T2 to the reading comprehension at T3 (standardized β = 0.25, p < 0.01), from the morphological awareness at T3 to the reading comprehension at T4 (standardized β = 0.26, p < 0.01), were significant, even after controlling for the general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming at T1, and the auto-regressive effect of reading comprehension. (3) The morphological awareness at T1 made significant indirect contributions to the reading comprehension at T3 via word reading at T2 (standardized β = 0.16, 95% CI [0.04, 0.29]) in addition to a significant direct contribution (β = 0.22, p < 0.05) after controlling the auto-regressive effect of reading comprehension and the reading-related skills among Chinese children. The results demonstrated the important role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension and the mechanism of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese young children. Specifically, there is a positive longitudinal effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension over and above continuity. In addition, it revealed significant indirect effects of morphological awareness on the reading comprehension via the word reading fluency. According to Automatic Theory in reading, most cognitive resources are spent on higher-level skills, such as drawing inferences and comprehension, if the processing of sub-skills became automatic. Possibly, children’s morphological awareness facilitates the accurate retrieval and integration of word meaning, and thereby influencs the reading comprehension. The currrent findings extend our understanding of the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Character recognition and dictation are two important skills for literacy at the word level. Because Chinese is a logographic script and characters are visually complex, reading and spelling character are more difficult than learning alphabet language. The development of character recognition and dictation in Chinese has unique characteristics. Many cross-sectional researches investigated how morphological awareness contributed to logographic and alphabet language learning, and its influence on the development of character recognition and dictation. However, few studies explored the relationship between morphological awareness and the development of character recognition and dictation over time. The present four-wave longitudinal research was conducted in two Mandarin Chinese primary schools for two years, with a sample consisting of 127 first grade students. A battery of measures, including nonverbal IQ, phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, morphological awareness (homophone awareness, compound word production) were administered in order to investigate the influential factors of character recognition and dictation development in children. The analysis included an unconditional latent growth model to examine the growth trajectory of character recognition and dictation, and a conditional latent growth model to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to the growth of character recognition and dictation. The results of the unconditional latent growth model showed that: (1) the developmental trajectory of character recognition showed linear growth it grew at a constant speed. The developmental trajectory of dictation showed non-linear growth, and the growth took place at a fast pace in the beginning and at a slower pace in the latter half of the development trend. Instead of Matthew effect, a compensation effect existed in both character recognition and dictation development, and the standardized correlation coefficients of intercept and slope for character recognition was -0.33 significantly, and for dictation was -0.89 significantly. (2) Homophone awareness and compound word production predicted significantly the children’s initial level (β = 0.40, p < 0.001; β = 0.14, p < 0.05 respectively) and the growth rate of character recognition (β = 0.28, p < 0.001; β = 0.25, p < 0.001 respectively), but not the growth rate in dictation. These results suggest that the growth trajectories were different for character recognition and dictation, and the later growth rates of character recognition and dictation were not decided by initial growth levels. The role of morphological awareness was more significant on the development of character recognition than on the development of dictation from Grade 1 to Grade 2.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression have high rates of co-morbidity among primary and secondary school students who have experienced a major natural disaster. Some researchers have suggested that overlapping symptoms and dysphoria symptoms of PTSD contribute to co-morbidity, while others have attempted to explain the co-morbidity through a causal relationship between them. However, most of these studies have been based on the hypothesis of common causes, explaining co-morbidity at level of disorders or dimensions, while few studies have investigated patterns of the co-morbidity from the perspective of symptoms. The Child PTSD Symptoms Scale (CPSS) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) were administered to two samples of primary and secondary school students one year after the earthquake (Wenchuan earthquake, N = 2530, 47.0% males, Mage = 12.86, SD = 1.96; Ya'an earthquake, N = 723, 47.7% males, Mage = 13.40, SD = 2.29). Gaussian graphical models (GGM) and Bayesian hill climbing algorithms were used to describe patterns of the co-morbidity between PTSD and depression. Overlapping symptoms and emotional numbness were the bridging symptoms. Detachment and future- limited symptoms were bridge symptoms in DSM-IV, were not bridge symptoms in the absence of DSM-IV, and fear, startle response and hypervigilance symptom were bridge symptoms. DSM-IV inaccurately defines the boundaries of PTSD, while intrusion and avoidance symptoms are core symptoms of PTSD. Depressive symptoms were more likely to trigger PTSD symptoms, while intrusive symptoms triggered avoidance symptoms. The above findings were cross-validated in both Wenchuan and Ya'an samples, enhancing the generalizability of the findings and responding to the reproducibility crisis of psychological research. This enlightens clinical practitioners to prioritize the identification of bridging symptoms in the early assessment of clients who have suffered from traumatic events, in order to screen out clients at high-risk of co-morbid with depression. Secondly, the bridge symptoms should also be used as a breakthrough in the intervention process to develop intervention strategies. Finally, during the prognostic process, special attention should be paid to the recurrence of bridging symptoms to prevent the re-emergence of co-morbidity.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Oral language serves as the foundation for reading development. A growing body of studies has pointed to the close connection between children’s oral vocabulary knowledge and their reading abilities. To advance reading research and literacy education, it is vital to clarify the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge in relation to reading abilities over children’s reading development. However, most existing research on this topic focused on either the starting point or the product of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, instead of the developmental trajectory over an extended period of time. To fill in this gap, the present study sought to reveal the developmental trajectory of oral vocabulary knowledge and its association with reading abilities among Chinese children across elementary grades. This work recruited 149 Mandarin-Chinese-speaking, typically developing children from Mainland China, and they were followed up for six years from Grades 1 to 6. All participants were tested on a battery of reading-related tests for eight times (Time 1 to Time 8), and 117 children completed all tests from T1 to T8, thus in the final pool. Five testing time points had a 6-month interval (Time 1 to Time 5 were from the Fall semester of Grade 1 to the Fall semester of Grade3), and the subsequent three time points had a one-year interval (T6 to T8 were in the Fall semester from Grades 4 to 6). Children were assessed on their non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), orthographical awareness (OA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at Time 1, oral vocabulary knowledge from Time 1 to Time 8, and reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension at Time 8. Latent growth modeling was conducted to examine: (1) the developmental trajectory of children’s oral vocabulary knowledge over time and (2) the predictive effects of the initial level (Time 1) and growth rates (Times 1-8) of oral vocabulary knowledge on reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at Time 8 while controlling for IQ, PA, MA, OA, and RAN measured at Time 1. Children’s oral vocabulary knowledge appeared to improve significantly, consistently over grades, and children’s initial levels of oral vocabulary knowledge did not seem to be linked to their growth rates over the years. The results of the conditional latent growth modeling showed that oral vocabulary knowledge made a significant, direct contribution to reading abilities, reading accuracy (initial status: B = 0.35, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.40, p < 0.001), reading fluency (initial status: B = 0.23, p = 0.037; growth rates: B = 0.27, p = 0.003), and reading comprehension (initial status: B = 0.39, p < 0.001; growth rates: B = 0.48, p < 0.001). Overall, initial status and growth rates of oral vocabulary knowledge were stronger predictors of reading accuracy and reading comprehension than that of reading fluency, and the growth rate was a stronger predictor of reading abilities than the initial status. Our findings elucidate the developmental changes in children’s oral vocabulary knowledge, as well as clarify their unique, significant predictive power of reading abilities (reading accuracy, reading fluency, and reading comprehension) in Chinese children from Grades 1 to 6. The findings shed light on the necessity of providing vocabulary learning opportunities for primary school children over their reading development.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The present study aims to examine the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge of elementary school students. Numerous studies on the language development of Chinese children show that as language learning progresses, an individual’s language system gradually develops and matures. Morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge play an important role in children’s language development. There is a solid one-to-one correspondence between syllables, morphemes and characters in Chinese. It is necessary to consider morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge simultaneously in the language development among elementary school children. Three follow-up tests were administered to 146 first-grade elementary school children over a 2-year period to examine changes in the developmental relationships between morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition, and vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children in grades 1 through 3. In addition, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming of digits, orthographic awareness and intelligence were all measured as control variables at Time 1 (spring semester of Grade 1). A cross-lagged model was conducted to explore the relationship among children’s morphological awareness, character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at different time points. The results showed that the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge varied across developmental stages after controlling the aforementioned control variables. (1) Chinese character recognition at Time 1 significantly predicted the homophone and homograph awareness at Time 2; (2) Vocabulary knowledge at Time 1 significantly predicted compounding awareness and Chinese character recognition at Time 2; (3) Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 significantly predicted homophone, homograph and compounding awareness at Time 3. (4) Homograph awareness at Time 2 significantly predicted vocabulary knowledge at Time 3. The results indicated that the relationship among different levels of morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese elementary children has been changed over time. From Grade 1 to Grade 3, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge had stable predictive effects on morphological awareness, while the predictive effects of morphological awareness on Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge changed with age.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Reading is an important skill and an effective way for individuals to obtain information. In the field of reading development, reading fluency, as an essential indicator of children’s reading ability development, has gradually attracted researchers’ attention. According to the Multidimensional View of Reading Fluency, reading fluency involves integrating cognitive skills related to reading, such as phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness. The processing of low-level cognitive skills is an integral part of reading fluency. In addition, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at the word level also play a vital role in children’s reading fluency development. However, few studies have explored the possible relationship between metalinguistic awareness, Chinese character recognition, vocabulary knowledge, and reading fluency. Therefore, to comprehensively investigate the predictive factors and mechanism of the low-grade primary school children’s reading fluency, the study intended to incorporate phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness into a systematic model to explore the relationship between three metalinguistic awareness and reading fluency, and the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. 149 primary school children were followed up three times a year, with their phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, and morphological awareness measured at Time 1 (fall semester of Grade 1), Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 (spring semester of Grade 1), and word reading fluency and silent reading fluency at Time 3 (fall semester of Grade 2). In addition, rapid naming and general cognitive ability were all measured as control variables at Time1 (fall semester of Grade 1). Spearman correlation analysis was established to investigate the correlation between variables. The structural equation model (SEM) was established to investigate the predictive effect of metalinguistic awareness on reading fluency and the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. The results showed that: (1) phonological awareness directly predicted word reading fluency. (2) orthographic awareness not only directly predicted word reading fluency and silent reading fluency but also predicted word reading fluency and silent reading fluency through Chinese character recognition. (3) Morphological awareness significantly predicted silent reading fluency in second grade, promoted word reading fluency through Chinese character recognition, and indirectly predicted silent reading fluency through the mediating role of Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge. The findings provide a reference basis for systematically investigating the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and reading fluency among Chinese children and provide theoretical guidance for improving children’s reading fluency skills.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The ultimate goal of reading is to achieve the understanding of written text information means reading comprehension, which is closely related to children’s future learning. In recent years, the effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on reading comprehension have received extensive attention. Besides, reading comprehension may be influenced not only by factors at the meta-linguistic level but also by higher-level language skills, such as reading fluency. Children in the early elementary grades are in the stage of “learning to read”. In this stage, the younger children are transitioning from word-reading mode to sentence silent mode. Sentence reading fluency is a deep structure of reading fluency. Its cognitive processing is more complex than that of word reading fluency, which may be affected by word reading fluency. However, few studies have been conducted on the possible relationships among phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading fluency, sentence silent reading fluency and reading comprehension, especially the chain mediating roles of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the predictive effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on children’s reading comprehension in the “learning to read” stage, as well as the chain mediating effects of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. The study included 149 first-graders who were followed three times in two years, with their phonological awareness, morphological awareness measured at Time 1 (the fall semester in grade 1), word reading fluency and sentence silent fluency at Time 2 (the spring semester in grade 1), and reading comprehension at Time 3 (the fall semester in grade 2). In addition, general cognitive ability and auto-regression in reading comprehension, which were served as control variables, were also tested at Time 1 and Time 2 respectively. Spearman correlation analysis was used to investigate the correlation between variables. And then, the structural equation model (SEM) was built to investigate the effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on reading comprehension and the chain mediating effects of word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency. The results showed that: (1) phonological awareness and morphological awareness both could directly predict reading comprehension. (2) Word reading fluency mediates the relationship between phonological awareness and reading comprehension, and word reading fluency mediates morphological awareness and reading comprehension. (3) Word reading fluency and sentence silent reading fluency play a chain mediating role between phonological awareness and reading comprehension, and word reading fluency and sentence silent fluency play a chain mediating role between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. The results demonstrated that phonological awareness and morphological awareness not only play an important role in reading comprehension, but also affect sentence fluency through word reading fluency and ultimately affect reading comprehension.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2022-07-07
Abstract：
The present study aims to examine the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge of elementary school students. Numerous studies on the language development of Chinese children show that as language learning progresses, an individual’s language system gradually develops and matures. Morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge play an important role in children’s language development. There is a solid one-to-one correspondence between syllables, morphemes and characters in Chinese. It is necessary to consider morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge simultaneously in the language development among elementary school children.
Three follow-up tests were administered to 146 first-grade elementary school children over a 2-year period to examine changes in the developmental relationships between morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition, and vocabulary knowledge in elementary school children in grades 1 through 3. In addition, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming of digits, orthographic awareness and intelligence were all measured as control variables at Time 1 (spring semester of Grade 1). A cross-lagged model was conducted to explore the relationship among children’s morphological awareness, character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at different time points.
The results showed that the relationship among morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge varied across developmental stages after controlling the aforementioned control variables. (1) Chinese character recognition at Time 1 significantly predicted the homophone and homograph awareness at Time 2; (2) Vocabulary knowledge at Time 1 significantly predicted compounding awareness and Chinese character recognition at Time 2; (3) Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 significantly predicted homophone, homograph and compounding awareness at Time 3. (4) Homograph awareness at Time 2 significantly predicted vocabulary knowledge at Time 3.
The results indicated that the relationship among different levels of morphological awareness, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese elementary children has been changed over time. From Grade 1 to Grade 3, Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge had stable predictive effects on morphological awareness, while the predictive effects of morphological awareness on Chinese character recognition and vocabulary knowledge changed with age.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Clinical and Counseling Psychology submitted time 2022-06-19
Abstract：
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression have high rates of co-morbidity among children and adolescents who have experienced a major natural disaster. Some researchers have suggested that overlapping symptoms and dysphoria symptoms of PTSD contribute to co-morbidity, while others have attempted to explain the co-morbidity through a causal relationship between them. However, most of these studies have been based on the hypothesis of common causes, explaining co-morbidity at level of disorders or dimensions, while few studies have investigated patterns of the co-morbidity from the perspective of symptoms.
The Child PTSD Symptoms Scale (CPSS) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) were administered to two samples of children and adolescent one year after the earthquake (Wenchuan earthquake, N = 2530, 47.0% males, Mage = 12.86, SD = 1.96; Ya'an earthquake, N = 723, 47.7% males, Mage = 13.40, SD = 2.29). Gaussian graphical models (GGM) and Bayesian hill climbing algorithms were used to describe patterns of the co-morbidity between PTSD and depression.
Overlapping symptoms and emotional numbness were the bridging symptoms. Detachment and future-limited symptoms were bridge symptoms in DSM-IV, were not bridge symptoms in the absence of DSM-IV, and fear, startle response and hypervigilance symptom were bridge symptoms. DSM-IV inaccurately defines the boundaries of PTSD, while intrusion and avoidance symptoms are core symptoms of PTSD. Depressive symptoms were more likely to trigger PTSD symptoms, while intrusive symptoms triggered avoidance symptoms.
The above findings were cross-validated in both Wenchuan and Ya'an samples, enhancing the generalizability of the findings and responding to the reproducibility crisis of psychological research. This enlightens clinical practitioners to prioritize the identification of bridging symptoms in the early assessment of clients who have suffered from traumatic events, in order to screen out clients at high-risk of co-morbid with depression. Secondly, the bridge symptoms should also be used as a breakthrough in the intervention process to develop intervention strategies. Finally, during the prognostic process, special attention should be paid to the recurrence of bridging symptoms to prevent the re-emergence of co-morbidity.
"
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-07-30
Abstract： Auditory word recognition involves complex cognitive processing. Blind people have certain advantages of auditory compensatory in word processing. However, due to the lack of visual input, the blind suffer more challenges in auditory word processing related with visual perceptual experience (e.g., color terms). Future research should focus on (1) the word categorization based on the relationship with visual experience; (2) the multifaceted effects and neuropsychological mechanisms of factors in auditory word recognition, including phonology, orthography, and semantics, in order to develop the special model of spoken word processing conforming to the perceptual characteristics of the blind; (3) developmental studies in different ages. Finally, to reveal the overall mechanism of the effect of blindness on auditory word recognition of the blind.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2020-11-11
Abstract： Based on a new conceptual frame of mental health literacy (MHL), which refers to two structural dimensions including “coping with mental illness–mental health promotion” and “self–others” and three aspects including knowledge, attitude, and behavior tendency, a systematic nationwide sampling survey was conducted for the purpose of understanding the mental health literacy profile of the Chinese. This study further explored the influences of four group variables (geographical and gross domestic product (GDP) distribution, basic demographic variables, socio-economic status, and mental health background) on mental health literacy. Another aim of this study was to provide some strategies for improving mental health literacy more effectively. The Chinese Mental Health Literacy Questionnaire and Basic Background Information Questionnaire were used to assess the mental health literacy levels of the Chinese and their influencing factors. The Chinese Mental Health Literacy Questionnaire contains six sub-scales (knowledge and concepts related to mental health, knowledge and concepts related to mental illness, attitudes and behavior tendency to maintain and promote one’s mental health, attitudes and behavior tendency to cope with one's mental illness, attitudes and behavior tendency to maintain and promote the mental health of others, and attitudes and behavior tendency to cope with the mental illness of others). The questionnaires were administered to 8866 Chinese adults in nine cities (Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Lishui, Kaifeng, Guilin, Zhangye, Baoding, and Linfen), which covered the well-developed, developing, and less-developed regions in China. With a balanced development considering geographical and GDP distribution, the results indicated that the mental health literacy levels among adults in different cities were low to moderate. Their influences on mental health literacy were small but significant with respect to geographical distribution, gender, age, familiarity with professional mental health service, and the frequency of contact with psychiatric patients. Regarding the structure of mental health literacy, the results of the development of national mental health literacy demonstrated that mental health maintenance and promotion literacy was better than mental illness coping literacy, and self-help literacy was better than helping others literacy. The survey found that the knowledge had relatively high individual differences, whereas attitudes and behaviors had relatively low individual differences concerning the contents of the mental health literacy. In addition, among the social influencing factors of mental health literacy this research tested, the socio-economic status was the most effective one, which showed large effect size in the knowledge and small to medium effect size in the attitudes and behavior tendency. These findings implicate that (1) improving mental health literacy is an arduous task; (2) improving the literacy of coping with mental illness should be the focus and breakthrough point of the current practice of mental health literacy promotion; (3) socio-ecological perspective should be adopted when developing a mental health literacy promotion policy; and (4) the mechanism of the attitude and behavior tendency change needs to be explored and clarified. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2020-02-13
Abstract： " Abstract: Character recognition and dictation are two important skills for literacy at the word level. Because Chinese is a logographic script and characters are visually complex, reading and spelling character are more difficult than learning alphabet language. The development of character recognition and dictation in Chinese has unique characteristics. Many cross-sectional researches investigated how morphological awareness contributed to logographic and alphabet language learning, and its influence on the development of character recognition and dictation. However, few studies explored the relationship between morphological awareness and the development of character recognition and dictation over time. The present four-wave longitudinal research was conducted in two Mandarin Chinese primary schools for two years, with a sample consisting of 127 first grader students. A battery of measures, including nonverbal IQ, phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, morphological awareness (homophone awareness, compound word production) were administered in order to investigate the influential factors of character recognition and dictation development in children. The analysis included an unconditional latent growth model to examine the growth trajectory of character recognition and dictation, and a conditional latent growth model to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to the growth of character recognition and dictation The results of the unconditional latent growth model showed that: (1) the developmental trajectory of character recognition showed linear growth it grew at a constant speed. The developmental trajectory of dictation showed non-linear growth, and the growth took place at a fast pace in the beginning and at a slower pace in the latter half of the development trend. Instead of Matthew effect, a compensation effect existed in both character recognition and dictation development, and the standardized correlation coefficients of intercept and slope for character recognition was -0.33 significantly, and for dictation was -0.89 significantly. (2) Homophone awareness and compound word production predicted significantly the children’s initial level(β=0.40, p＜0.001; β=0.14, p＜0.05 respectively) and the growth rate of character recognition (β=0.28, p＜0.001; β=0.25, p＜0.001 respectively), but not the growth rate in dictation. These results suggest that the growth trajectories were different for character recognition and dictation, and the later growth rates of character recognition and dictation were not decided by initial growth levels. The role of morphological awareness was more significant on the development of character recognition than on the development of dictation from Grade 1 to Grade 2.
Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2020-01-10
Abstract： The auditory channel is disabled for people who are deaf and hard of hearing, so they have to rely heavily on visual language — lip-reading and sign language — to develop their reading ability. Lip-reading can help deaf and hard-of-hearing people to form phonological representation, develop vocabulary knowledge, and promote word reading and reading comprehension. Oral and written language processing activates sign language, which affects all levels of reading ability for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Future research should explore the role of reading skills such as phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in the effect of visual language on reading ability, and develop a theoretical model that explains the mechanisms underlying reading acquisition by visual language for Chinese people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Clinical and Counseling Psychology submitted time 2019-11-21
Abstract： Empathy refers to the traits, or tendencies, of a person to affectively experience emotions of concern at the suffering of others and to cognitively adopt another person’s perspective. Possession of empathy has been assumed to encourage prosocial behavior. The mechanisms by which empathy affects prosocial behavior for adolescent survivors of disaster, however, are unclear. Posttraumatic growth (PTG) was considered a common positive change following trauma events and was identified as having a high prevalence rate in various trauma types. After experiencing natural disasters, individuals with high empathy are more vulnerable to their adverse environment and the traumatic situations of others. This results in more psychological pressure and fear, and these pressures and negative emotions force individuals to think about the meaning of trauma, thus promoting the generation of PTG. The emergence of PTG brings positive behavioral change among survivors after the disaster. Therefore, it was suggested that empathy may exert indirect effects on prosocial behavior through PTG. According to current theories, empathy has different emotional and cognitive components. When individuals empathize with others, these components are activated, which may lead to gratitude and, in turn, result in prosocial behavior. As a moral barometer, gratitude informs the beneficiary that a benefactor has bestowed a gift. The prosocial behavior of a benefactor toward a beneficiary is thought to produce gratitude within the beneficiary. This then stimulates the beneficiary’s prosocial behavior, further strengthening the benefactor’s own prosocial behavior. Furthermore, traumatized survivors with greater empathy may improve communication with others, increase the sense of intimacy, and perceive more support from others—meaning that empathy may lead individuals to have more social support. Social support refers to an individual’s perception of the support provided by others. That perception can be influenced by gratitude. Adolescents with low social support are more likely to interpret other people’s ambiguous actions as aggressive. Thus, stable social relationships seem to promote PTG and prosocial behavior. Taken together, it is possible that empathy can promote prosocial behavior through gratitude, social support, and PTG in post-disaster contexts. The utility of these predictions, however, was unclear. To examine the relation between empathy, gratitude, social support, PTG and prosocial behavior, this study used an interpersonal reactivity index scale, gratitude questionnaire, social support questionnaire, posttraumatic growth inventory and prosocial behavior questionnaire to assess 542 adolescents following Ya’an earthquake. The results indicated that after controlling the trauma exposure, empathy have a positive association with prosocial behavior through the following routes: three one-mediator paths of gratitude, social support and PTG, respectively; three two-mediator paths of gratitude via PTG, social support via PTG and gratitude via social support, and one three-mediator path from gratitude to PTG via social support. These findings suggested that following a natural disaster, adolescent survivors’ empathy may have an indirect and positive relation with prosocial behavior by gratitude, social support and PTG.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2019-05-13
Abstract： " Vocabulary knowledge is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. According to the DVC (decoding, vocabulary, comprehension) reading skill triangle model (Perfetti, 2010), reading comprehension is dependent on knowing the meanings of words being read. At the same time, readers can infer the meanings of unfamiliar words encountered in reading. Therefore, a reciprocal relationship may exist between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, which is not documented in previous research. The aim of the present study is to examine the relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in different grades of elementary school. A total of 399 students from first, third and fifth grades were tested on vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension tasks at two time points over one year, along with phonological awareness, morphological awareness and nonverbal reasoning at Time 1 (the fall semester in grade 1, 3 and 5) as control variables. A cross-lagged model was used to investigate the relation between vocabulary and reading comprehension in each grade span. The results showed that, after controlling for phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and nonverbal reasoning, the relation between vocabulary and comprehension varied in different developmental stages. Vocabulary knowledge did not significantly predict later reading comprehension in primary grades (grade 1 to grade 2). Bidirectional predictive relation was found between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in middle grades (grade 3 to grade 4). Vocabulary knowledge in grade 5 did not predict later reading comprehension in grade 6, while reading comprehension in grade 5 significantly predicted later vocabulary knowledge in grade 6. The results support reading stage theory (Chall, 1983) and supplement the DVC reading skill triangle model (Perfetti, 2010). The relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among Chinese elementary children changes over time. The primary grades are in the stage of “learning to read”, children’s vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension are mainly affected by the basic cognitive and linguistic skills. The reciprocal relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is evident in middle grades. The enrichment of vocabulary knowledge enables children to read skilled, and the comprehension of texts can also help children learn new words from texts. Reading comprehension plays an increasingly important role in vocabulary development from middle to upper elementary grades. These findings have implications for reading instruction in Chinese at different developmental stages.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2019-04-10
Abstract： Maternal gatekeeping behavior is defined as a collection of behaviors that facilitate or inhibit the collaborative effort of fathers in the family and child-care work, which is an integral part of the coparenting relationship that is essential to family life. Gatekeeping behavior can be further classified into maternal opening behaviors and closing behaviors. The former facilitates, and the latter inhibits father involvement in parenting activities. Research on maternal gatekeeping behavior has mainly focused on its predictive effects on father involvement in the father–child subsystem. Limited research has also been conducted on predictive effects of maternal gatekeeping behaviors on the function of other family subsystems such as mother-adolescent subsystem. Based on the spillover hypothesis of family system theory, this study explored how maternal opening and closing behavior predicted mother involvement and mother–adolescent attachment that respectively represents top–down and bottom–up mother-adolescent interactions. Moreover, the attachment theory assumes that parenting by the mother is the basis of attachment formation and development. As a result, mother involvement might have a positive predictive role on mother-adolescent attachment. Therefore, an indirect effect model of maternal gatekeeping behavior on mother involvement and mother-adolescent attachment is proposed. Specifically, it is suggested that mother involvement might mediate the relationship between maternal gatekeeping behavior and mother-adolescent attachment. Furthermore, the associations among these three factors might differ during different stages of adolescence, such as early, middle, and late adolescence. Families (N=598) that included mothers and their adolescent children participated in this study. Mothers reported their gatekeeping behaviors using the Maternal Gatekeeping Scale (Puhlman & Pasley, 2017) and involvement using the Inventory of Parental Involvement (Wu et al., 2015). Adolescents evaluated their attachment to their mothers using the mother attachment sub-scale of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987). Data were analyzed using correlational analysis and structural equation modeling in SPSS 21.0 and Mplus 7.11. Results generally indicated that maternal opening behavior positively predicted mother involvement and mother-adolescent attachment. In particular, the effect of maternal opening behavior on mother-adolescent attachment was mediated by mother involvement, indicative of the indirect effect of maternal gatekeeping behavior on mother-adolescent attachment. However, maternal closing behavior negatively predicted mother-adolescent attachment but not mother involvement. Moreover, there was no indirect effect between maternal closing behavior and mother-adolescent attachment. Furthermore, an analysis of group comparisons revealed that the indirect effects model of maternal gate opening was significant in all three developmental stages, and the magnitude of the indirect effect was not significantly different between the three stages. Also, there were group differences in relationships among maternal closing behavior, mother involvement and mother-adolescent attachment in the three stages of adolescence. Specifically, in early adolescence, maternal closing behavior had a positive effect on mother involvement and mother-adolescent attachment with mother involvement mediating the relationship between maternal closing behavior and mother-adolescent attachment. On the contrary, in late adolescence, maternal closing behavior had an adverse effect on mother involvement and mother-adolescent attachment with mother involvement mediating the relationship between maternal closing behavior and mother–adolescent attachment. In middle adolescence, there were no significant predictive effects of maternal closing behavior on mother involvement or mother-adolescent attachment. This study on the whole indicated that maternal gatekeeping behavior, which is an essential aspect of coparenting, was closely related to the quality of the relationship between mothers and adolescents. Furthermore, the study suggested that developmental stages of adolescence must be considered when exploring the roles of maternal gatekeeping behavior in different family system domains. This new evidences from this study indicate practical family education programs should promote maternal opening behaviors such as facilitating fathers’ participation in child-rearing and decrease maternal closing behavior such as criticism and control for fathers’ participation.
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