Ma Shaowei, Zhang Xiumei, Hatfield Hunter, Wei Wen-Hua
School of Foreign Languages, Langfang Teachers University, Langfang, China.
Department of English and Linguistics, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 26;11:327. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00327. eCollection 2020.
Reading disorders (RD) are common and complex neuropsychological conditions associated with decoding printed words and/or reading comprehension. Early identification of children at risk of RD is critical to allow timely interventions before mental suffering and reading impairment take place. Chinese is a unique medium for studying RD because of extra efforts required in reading acquisition of characters based on meaning rather than phonology. Pinyin, an alphabetic coding system mapping Mandarin sounds to characters, is important to develop oral language skills and a promising candidate for early screening for RD. In this pilot study, we used a cohort of 100 students (50 each in Grades 1 and 2) to derive novel profiles of applying Pinyin to identify early schoolers at risk of RD. Each student had comprehensive reading related measures in two consecutive years, including Pinyin reading and reading comprehension tested in the first and second year, respectively. We showed that Pinyin reading was mainly determined by phonological awareness, was well developed in Grade 1 and the top predictor of reading comprehension (explaining ∼30% of variance, < 1.0e-05). Further, students who performed poorly in Pinyin reading [e.g. 1 standard deviation (SD) below the average, counting 14% in Grade 1 and 10% in Grade 2], tended to perform poorly in future reading comprehension tests, including all four individuals in Grade 1 (two out of three in Grade 2) who scored 1.5 SDs below the average. Pinyin is therefore an effective proxy for early screening for Mandarin-speaking children at risk of RD.
阅读障碍（RD）是常见且复杂的神经心理状况，与解码印刷文字和/或阅读理解有关。尽早识别有阅读障碍风险的儿童对于在心理痛苦和阅读障碍发生之前及时进行干预至关重要。中文是研究阅读障碍的独特媒介，因为基于意义而非语音来习得汉字需要付出额外努力。拼音是一种将普通话语音映射到汉字的字母编码系统，对于发展口语技能很重要，并且是阅读障碍早期筛查的一个有前景的候选指标。在这项试点研究中，我们对100名学生（一年级和二年级各50名）进行了研究，以得出应用拼音来识别有阅读障碍风险的早期学龄儿童的新特征。每名学生连续两年都接受了与阅读相关的综合测评，包括分别在第一年和第二年进行的拼音阅读和阅读理解测试。我们发现，拼音阅读主要由语音意识决定，在一年级时发展良好，并且是阅读理解的最佳预测指标（解释约30%的方差，<1.0e-05）。此外，拼音阅读表现较差的学生[例如比平均水平低1个标准差（SD），一年级占14%，二年级占10%]，在未来的阅读理解测试中往往表现不佳，包括一年级的所有四名学生（二年级三名中有两名）得分比平均水平低1.5个标准差。因此，拼音是筛查有阅读障碍风险的普通话儿童的有效替代指标。
