Reading depends on writing, in Chinese

Li Tan · John A. Spinks · Guinevere F. Eden · Charles A. Perfetti · Wai Ting Siok

487 citations0/0 files storedProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Reading and Literacy Development Language Development and Disorders Writing and Handwriting Education

Abstract

Language development entails four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Over the past four decades, a large body of evidence has indicated that reading acquisition is strongly associated with a child's listening skills, particularly the child's sensitivity to phonological structures of spoken language. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the close relationship between reading and listening is manifested universally across languages and that behavioral remediation using strategies addressing phonological awareness alleviates reading difficulties in dyslexics. The prevailing view of the central role of phonological awareness in reading development is largely based on studies using Western (alphabetic) languages, which are based on phonology. The Chinese language provides a unique medium for testing this notion, because logographic characters in Chinese are based on meaning rather than phonology. Here we show that the ability to read Chinese is strongly related to a child's writing skills and that the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese reading is much weaker than that in reports regarding alphabetic languages. We propose that the role of logograph writing in reading development is mediated by two possibly interacting mechanisms. The first is orthographic awareness, which facilitates the development of coherent, effective links among visual symbols, phonology, and semantics; the second involves the establishment of motor programs that lead to the formation of long-term motor memories of Chinese characters. These findings yield a unique insight into how cognitive systems responsible for reading development and reading disability interact, and they challenge the prominent phonological awareness view.

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References

1983Categorizing sounds and learning to read—a causal connection 2005Reading Acquisition, Developmental Dyslexia, and Skilled Reading Across Languages: A Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory.2004Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?1999The double-deficit hypothesis for the developmental dyslexias.1969Learning to Read: The Great Debate 1997Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study.2004Kindergarten Prediction of Reading Skills: A Longitudinal Comparative Analysis.2003Neural deficits in children with dyslexia ameliorated by behavioral remediation: Evidence from functional MRI

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2008A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers 2015Is Chinese Special? Four Aspects of Chinese Literacy Acquisition that Might Distinguish Learning Chinese from Learning Alphabetic Orthographies 2007Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain's reading network 2011What is in the naming? A 5-year longitudinal study of early rapid naming and phonological sensitivity in relation to subsequent reading skills in both native Chinese and English as a second language.

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