Developmental Issues in Chinese Children's Character Acquisition

McBride-Chang, Catherine
Ho, Connie Suk-Han

¹Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Catherine McBride-Chang, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

³Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Connie Suk-Han Ho, Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.

This project was supported by a direct grant (2020336) from Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Received Date: February 25, 1999; Revised Date: May 26, 1999; Accepted Date: May 26, 1999

Journal of Educational Psychology 92(1):p 50-55, March 2000.

Measures of phonological processing, speech perception, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 109 Hong Kong Chinese 3- and 4-year-olds. A model predicting phonological awareness from vocabulary, verbal short-term memory, and speech perception was supported. Both phonological awareness and letter naming predicted unique variance in character recognition after controlling for other phonological processing and vocabulary skills, similar to previous studies of Western readers.