Search

This study aims to bridge the research gap in the humour comprehension problems of individuals with dyslexia in Chinese culture. We conducted a nonexperimental study to examine the differences between Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia in visual humour comprehension as well as the group differences in the correlation of visual humour comprehension with other abilities. In total, 48 Chinese adolescents (16 individuals with dyslexia and 32 individuals without dyslexia) were recruited in Hong Kong. They were all administered several tasks: tests of nonverbal IQ, Chinese character reading, visual-spatial attention, orthographic knowledge, and visual humour comprehension. Our results indicated that visual humour comprehension is correlated with other abilities. Additionally, the group with dyslexia performed significantly less accurately on most tasks except humour comprehension accuracy. However, only visual spatial attention, orthographic knowledge, and humour comprehension speed significantly predicted membership in the two groups. Finally, approximately half of the participants with dyslexia had significantly slower humour comprehension than those with typical development. Our findings shed light on problems with humour comprehension exhibited by Chinese individuals with dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The co-morbidity of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disorder (RD) is more frequent than expected. This investigation assessed the potential uniqueness of the co-morbidity of ADHD and RD and extended existing findings to the Chinese language. A parallel group design with a post hoc analysis of group differences was employed to compare 4 groups of children (30 with ADHD, 33 with RD, 28 with ADHD + RD, and 30 typically developing) regarding their reading comprehension, attention, reading-related abilities, and cognitive abilities. The findings indicated that children with RD and/or ADHD symptom(s) exhibited diverse cognitive profiles, and the distinguishing factor contributed to different inhibitions. Additionally, Chinese-speaking children with the co-morbid symptoms of RD and ADHD demonstrated greater deficits in auditory working memory and rapid naming than did the pure-deficit groups. Furthermore, although problems with phonological awareness were similar between the 2 groups, the deficiency of orthographic knowledge was more severe in children with RD than in the co-morbid group. The ADHD + RD group's cognitive and reading-related abilities displayed a relatively complicated pattern that should be considered in the diagnosis of either RD or ADHD and their remediation design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the underlying mechanism of the relationship between visual working memory (VWM) and Chinese character recognition, and the moderation effect of processing efficiency on this relationship, 154 first-grade students were administered a battery of tasks for VWM, rapid temporal processing, and Chinese character reading. In the VWM task, the children were asked to remember the jumping routes of a frog and report these routes in reverse sequence. The longest span for which each participant could respond correctly at least four times out of six was the VWM index. In the task of temporal order judgement, the participants were asked to select which of two balls was presented first, with stimulus onset asynchronies varying from 8 to 492 ms according to an adaptive psychophysical procedure. Visual temporal order threshold (VTOT) was utilized as an indicator of processing efficiency. The participants were asked to read 100 characters aloud to measure their word-level reading abilities in Chinese character recognition. After controlling age, non-verbal intelligence, visual short-term memory, morphological awareness, and orthographic awareness, the results of a moderation effect analysis showed that (1) both VWM and visual VTOT predicted Chinese character reading, and (2) the moderation effect of VTOT on the VWM-reading link was significant (p = 0.001). The correlation between VWM and Chinese character reading was positive and significant when VTOTs were above average (i.e., smaller than 87.14 ms); however, the correlation was negative at relatively poor levels of VTOTs (i.e., larger than 231.44 ms). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships among visual and auditory temporal processing, rapid naming, and oral reading fluency in Chinese children with and without dyslexia were examined. Primary school-aged Chinese children with dyslexia (N = 47) and chronological-age-matched controls (N = 47) were recruited. Temporal processing, rapid naming, oral reading fluency, Chinese character reading, and nonverbal IQ were assessed. There were significant correlations among visual and auditory temporal processing, rapid naming, and oral reading fluency. The patterns of the relationships among these measures differed between the children with and without dyslexia. The path analyses revealed that visual temporal processing had significant direct and indirect effects (through rapid naming) on oral reading fluency; only the children with dyslexia showed a significant direct effect of auditory temporal processing. These findings have research and educational implications for enhancing the reading abilities of Chinese children with dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined whether temporal processing (TP) is associated with reading of a non-alphabetic script, that is, Chinese. A total of 126 primary school–aged Chinese children from Taiwan (63 children with dyslexia) completed cross-modal, visual, and auditory temporal order judgment tasks and measures of Chinese reading and literacy-related skills. The results showed that typically developing children and children with dyslexia differed in all TP skills. Structural equation modeling indicated that cross-modal TP contributed independently to character recognition in the entire sample if the significant effects of phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatized naming were considered. The multi-sample analysis showed that TP did not predict reading in the typical group after controlling for literacy-related skills, but visual and cross-modal TP skills independently contributed to reading in the group with dyslexia in addition to literacy-related skills. Finally, the path analysis indicated that in the typical group, separate TP skills affected reading through literacy-related skills, but visual and cross-modal TP skills had direct effects on character reading in the group with dyslexia. These findings suggest that TP is more important for reading in children with dyslexia than in typically developing children, and the roles of TP in dyslexia require further examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine the effects of temporal processing training on the reading abilities of Chinese children with dyslexia. In total, 69 Chinese children with dyslexia in grades three through six were recruited in Taiwan. The children were divided into the following three equal groups: (1) auditory temporal processing training group, (2) visual temporal processing training group, and (3) control group with no specific training. The participants in both training groups received instruction with identical durations (30-40 min), intensities (12 times in total), and frequencies (three to four times per week). The participants in the control group were asked to independently surf some specified websites using devices similar to those used by the two experimental groups for an identical duration, intensity, and frequency. Our results indicated that the two groups who received temporal processing training exhibited significant correlations among Chinese character reading, rapid naming, and corresponding reading-related abilities, while visual temporal processing served as a significant predictor of Chinese character reading ability even if all background data, reading-related abilities, and auditory temporal processing were introduced first. Additionally, significant interactions were found between the Groups and Tested sessions in all the measures, except for phonological awareness, confirming the distinct effects of different temporal processing on most measures involved in this study. Further simple main effects revealed that only those who received the visual temporal processing training gained benefits in the corresponding reading-related ability (i.e., orthographic knowledge) and far-transfer to Chinese character reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is emerging evidence that individuals with developmental dyslexia show deficits in visual–spatial attention. This study focused on visual searches and examined whether visual search deficits would be found in Chinese children with dyslexia. More importantly, we examined the associations between dyslexia and distinct types of visual searches, to determine whether deficits are specific to some visual searches but not others. Methods: The dyslexic children and their age‐matched typical peers completed both the inefficient and relatively efficient search tasks. Results: The dyslexic children were generally impaired in visual searches, although the deficit in inefficient searches was more severe than in efficient searches. After phonological awareness, working memory and nonverbal IQ were considered; inefficient searches were found to be selectively impaired. Conclusions: These findings suggest that visual search deficits in dyslexia are universal across alphabetic and logographic writing systems. They highlight the importance of further study on the role of top‐down attention on reading. Highlights: What is already known about this topicReading difficulties are related to impairment of visual–spatial attention.Dyslexic readers of alphabetic orthographies show deficits in visual searches, especially inefficient searches.Visual skills are particularly important for reading in Chinese, a logographic writing system known for visual complexity and lacking of grapheme–phoneme correspondence. What this paper addsChinese children with dyslexia showed impaired visual searches compared with typically developing children.Deficits of dyslexic children were more severe in inefficient searches than in efficient ones.After phonological awareness and working memory were considered, visual search dysfunction of dyslexic Chinese children was specific to the inefficient searches. Implications for theory, policy or practiceInefficient visual search skill is uniquely related to dyslexia in Chinese beyond phonological awareness, supporting sensory‐cognitive accounts of dyslexia.Selective impairment in inefficient searches underscores the importance to study top‐down attentional mechanism in reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]