Choi William, Bautista Alfredo, Kong Siu-Hang, Lai Veronica Ka Wai
Academic Unit of Human Communication, Learning, and Development, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Speech and Music Perception Laboratory, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Aug 29;16:1563491. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1563491. eCollection 2025.
This study compared the phonological, musical, and general cognitive profiles of early-emerging poor, average, and good readers.
We assessed Cantonese preschool children on Chinese word reading, phonological awareness, lexical tone awareness, musical rhythm perception, musical pitch perception, working memory, and non-verbal intelligence.
Early-emerging poor readers exhibited poorer phonological awareness than early-emerging average and good readers, whereas the latter two groups did not differ significantly. In the working memory task, early-emerging good readers outperformed both early-emerging average and poor readers, who performed similarly. No significant group differences were found in lexical tone awareness, musical rhythm perception, musical pitch perception, or non-verbal intelligence.
The results reflect phonological deficits in early-emerging poor readers. Furthermore, phonological awareness and working memory were useful for identifying early-emerging poor and good readers, respectively. Clinically, these findings imply that early-emerging poor readers may benefit most from initial phonological awareness training, followed by working memory training. Moreover, working memory training may also be beneficial for early-emerging average readers seeking to improve their Chinese word reading.
本研究比较了早期出现的阅读能力差、中等和优秀的读者在语音、音乐和一般认知方面的特征。
我们对粤语学龄前儿童进行了中文单词阅读、语音意识、词汇声调意识、音乐节奏感知、音高感知、工作记忆和非语言智力方面的评估。
早期出现的阅读能力差的读者在语音意识方面比早期出现的阅读能力中等和优秀的读者差，而后两组之间没有显著差异。在工作记忆任务中，早期出现的阅读能力优秀的读者表现优于早期出现的阅读能力中等和差的读者，后两者表现相似。在词汇声调意识、音乐节奏感知、音高感知或非语言智力方面未发现显著的组间差异。
结果反映了早期出现的阅读能力差的读者存在语音缺陷。此外，语音意识和工作记忆分别有助于识别早期出现的阅读能力差和优秀的读者。在临床上，这些发现意味着早期出现的阅读能力差的读者可能从最初的语音意识训练中获益最大，其次是工作记忆训练。此外，工作记忆训练对于寻求提高中文单词阅读能力的早期出现的阅读能力中等的读者也可能有益。
