Guan Connie Qun, Ye Feifei, Wagner Richard K, Meng Wanjin, Leong Che Kan
University of Science and Technology Beijing, P.R. China ; Florida State University, Tallahassee, U. S. A.
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, U. S. A.
J Educ Psychol. 2014 Aug;106(3):779-798. doi: 10.1037/a0035984.
The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about four issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) Whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b) whether they are important predictors of Chinese written composition, and if so, the relative magnitudes and independence of their predictive relations; (c) whether observed predictive relations are mediated by text comprehension; and (d) whether these relations vary or are developmentally invariant across three years of writing development. Based on analyses of the performance of students in grades 4 (n = 246), 5 (n = 242) and 6 (n = 261), the results supported morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory as distinct yet correlated abilities that made independent contributions to predicting Chinese written composition, with working memory as the strongest predictor. However, predictive relations were mediated by text comprehension. The final model accounted for approximately 75 percent of the variance in Chinese written composition. The results were largely developmentally invariant across the three grades from which participants were drawn.
（a）形态意识、句法加工和工作记忆在中国是否代表不同且可测量的结构，还是仅仅是一般语言能力的表现；（b）它们是否是汉语写作的重要预测因素，如果是，其预测关系的相对大小和独立性；（c）观察到的预测关系是否由文本理解介导；以及（d）这些关系在三年的写作发展过程中是变化的还是发展不变的。基于对四年级（n = 246）、五年级（n = 242）和六年级（n = 261）学生表现的分析，结果支持形态意识、句法加工和工作记忆是不同但相关的能力，它们对预测汉语写作有独立贡献，其中工作记忆是最强的预测因素。然而，预测关系由文本理解介导。最终模型解释了汉语写作中约75%的方差。在抽取参与者的三个年级中，结果在很大程度上是发展不变的。
