TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pan, Jinger
A1  - Kong, Yan
A1  - Song, Shuang
A1  - McBride, Catherine
A1  - Liu, Hongyun
A1  - Shu, Hua
T1  - Socioeconomic status, parent report of children’s early language skills, and late literacy skills
BT  - a long term follow-up study among Chinese children
JF  - Reading and writing : an interdisciplinary journal
N2  - Previous research on the longitudinal prediction of literacy development has focused mainly on the relationship between early cognitive/language skills and late literacy skills. The present study aimed to test the reliability of a number of measures reported by parents as compared to measuring cognitive and language skills in predicting subsequent reading achievement. Two hundred sixty-two Chinese children were administered four cognitive and language skills over three years at the preliterate stage. Additional information on children’s family socioeconomic status (SES), children’s early language skills, familial reading performance and habits, and familial handedness based on the observations of parents was collected. Performance on these variables in relation to subsequent literacy skills at 11 years of age was examined. SES and children’s early language skills significantly predicted subsequent literacy skills. Even with a number of cognitive and language skills statistically controlled, parental reports of children’s early language skills still contributed to reading comprehension. Poor readers defined at 11 years of age had lagged behind in early language skills, as well as family reading performance and habits, as compared to typically developing readers. These findings suggest that SES and parental estimates of children’s early language skills are useful for predicting children’s subsequent reading achievement.
KW  - SES
KW  - Parent questionnaire
KW  - Early language skills
KW  - Familial risk
KW  - Chinese reading
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9682-4
SN  - 0922-4777
SN  - 1573-0905
VL  - 30
SP  - 401
EP  - 416
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yan, Ming
A1  - Zhou, Wei
A1  - Shu, Hua
A1  - Kliegl, Reinhold
T1  - Perceptual span depends on font size during the reading of chinese sentences
JF  - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition
N2  - The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results showed that Chinese readers needed at least 4 characters to the right of fixation to maintain a normal reading behavior when visually similar masks were used and when characters were displayed in small fonts, indicating that the span is dynamically influenced by masking materials. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked whether the perceptual span varies as a function of font size in spaced (German) and unspaced (Chinese) scripts. Results clearly suggest perceptual span depends on font size in Chinese, but we failed to find such evidence for German. We propose that the perceptual span in Chinese is flexible; it is strongly constrained by its language-specific properties such as high information density and lack of word spacing. Implications for saccade-target selection during the reading of Chinese sentences are discussed.
KW  - eye movements
KW  - parafoveal processing
KW  - perceptual span
KW  - Chinese reading
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038097
SN  - 0278-7393
SN  - 1939-1285
VL  - 41
IS  - 1
SP  - 209
EP  - 219
PB  - American Psychological Association
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tsai, Jie-Li
A1  - Kliegl, Reinhold
A1  - Yan, Ming
T1  - Parafoveal semantic information extraction in traditional Chinese reading
JF  - Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics
N2  - Semantic information extraction from the parafovea has been reported only in simplified Chinese for a special subset of characters and its generalizability has been questioned. This study uses traditional Chinese, which differs from simplified Chinese in visual complexity and in mapping semantic forms, to demonstrate access to parafoveal semantic information during reading of this script. Preview duration modulates various types (identical, phonological, and unrelated) of parafoveal information extraction. Parafoveal semantic extraction is more elusive in English; therefore, we conclude that such effects in Chinese are presumably caused by substantial cross-language differences from alphabetic scripts. The property of Chinese characters carrying rich lexical information in a small region provides the possibility of semantic extraction in the parafovea.
KW  - Semantic preview benefit
KW  - Chinese reading
KW  - Eye movements
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.06.004
SN  - 0001-6918
SN  - 1873-6297
VL  - 141
IS  - 1
SP  - 17
EP  - 23
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -