Direct effects of visual skills and working memory on Chinese character reading in young children

• Published in: Infant and child development Vol. 30; no. 4
• Main Authors: Yang, Xiujie, Qiao, Linyan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester Wiley 01-07-2021; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Attention; Character Recognition; Children; Chinese; Chinese reading; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Ability; Cognitive skills; Correlation; Decision Making; Foreign Countries; Ideography; Inhibition; Kindergarten; kindergarten children; Memory; Personality; Precursors; Reaction time; Reading; Reading Skills; Response inhibition; Romanization; Short Term Memory; Spatial Ability; Spatial memory; Thinking Skills; verbal working memory; Visual memory; Visual Perception; visual skills; visuospatial working memory; Written Language; China
• ISSN: 1522-7227; 1522-7219
• DOI: 10.1002/icd.2231

The present study aimed to examine how visual skills, verbal working memory, visuospatial working memory, and other general cognitive skills (inhibitory control, attention, and decision speed) were simultaneously correlated with the early acquisition of reading among kindergarten children. A total of 99 Chinese children were tested individually on the Chinese character recognition task, the block design task, the digit span task, the visuospatial sketchpad task, the continuous performance task (CPT), the flanker task, and the choice reaction time task. The results showed that visual skills and working memory accounted for 15% of the unique variance in character reading, whereas other general cognitive skills, including decision speed, inhibitory control and attention, did not significantly explain the variance in character reading when visual skills and working memory were considered. Specifically, verbal working memory, rather than visuospatial working memory, explained the unique variance in children's learning of character reading. These findings highlighted that visual skills and verbal working memory were among the most important precursors of reading in children at the beginning stage of learning Chinese characters.