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One of the most well-known instructional methods used to enhance Chinese character reading (CCR) is Chinese stem-deriving instruction (CSDI). In this method, CCR is taught via a group of characters (e.g., 清, 情, and 靚) that share the same stem (e.g., 青). However, the effectiveness of CSDI on the CCR of Chinese children with dyslexia remains inconsistent, and the reason may be the diverse designs of this method across studies. Thus, this study aimed to use a quasiexperiment-design study to compare the effects of various forms of CSDI based on the (in)consistency of the extending characters' sounds, their appearances, and their amount (i.e., how many of them). In total, 122 Chinese third to sixth graders with dyslexia were recruited from primary schools, and they were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (a) visuospatially controlled CSDI (n = 37; all taught characters shared the same pronunciation), (b) verbally controlled CSDI (n = 45; all taught characters shared the same structure), and (c) noncontrolled CSDI (n = 40; all taught characters selected only on the basis of their frequencies). They were tested by CCR and dictation before and after the instruction. We found that CCR was significantly improved in all three CSDI groups, whereas only the verbally controlled CSDI group showed significant improvements in dictation. Furthermore, verbally and visuospatially controlled CSDI earned the greatest benefits in decreasing the visual errors and phonetic errors in CCR and decreasing the radical errors and homophone errors in dictation. Our findings shed light on the effectiveness of CSDI in terms of diverse designs, and frontline practitioners should take our findings into consideration when using CSDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This cross-sectional study aims to examine the age differences in state anxiety (i.e., anxiety triggered toward specific situations) as well as its relationship to the reading comprehension of Chinese students with and without dyslexia across school ages. In total, 131 typically developing students and 81 students with dyslexia in primary and secondary schools were recruited in Taiwan. Our results indicate that students with versus those without dyslexia have different patterns of state anxiety across the three age levels. In addition, we found similar patterns between students with dyslexia and those without across the three age levels in the effects of state anxiety on reading comprehension. However, the contributions of state anxiety to reading comprehension tended to decline as typically developing students matured, while they remained relatively constant for students with dyslexia across the three age levels. These results may have implications for teaching activities or examinations for students whose state anxiety has a significant impact on their reading comprehension skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to compare auditory temporal processing and phonological processing across locations and age levels and to test the direct and indirect effects of auditory temporal and phonological processing on proficiency in Chinese character reading. We recruited 108 typically developing children — 25 and 24 kindergarteners from Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively, and 34 and 25 primary school students from Taiwan and Hong Kong, respectively. Our findings showed that, before learning PCS, the languages' phonological complexity did not affect the importance of ATP in Chinese reading. Also, we found the use of PCS could lead to a direct effect from students' ATP to Chinese character reading as well as through phonological awareness. Our findings indicated that ways of learning to read influence children's patterns of cognitive and linguistic abilities, which should be considered in teaching designs for reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wrapping layer's foaming process of the car steering wheel industry usually relies on the manual parameter setting by experienced engineers, but the reliability and validity are usually hard to control due to many foaming factors that affect the hardness of steering wheel wrapping layer (e.g., vulcanization time, mold temperature, material liquid temperature, material discharge pressure, humidity). This paper first proposes an intelligent process parameter recommendation system architecture, then develops a neural network-based hardness prediction (NNHP) model to predict the car steering wheel's wrapping hardness. Consequently, we combine NNHP and genetic algorithm (GA) to develop a foaming process parameter recommendation model (NNHP-GA) to effectively recommend the most suitable combinations of process parameters for achieving the desired wrapping hardness in an IoT-based intelligent manufacturing environment. An empirical study is applied in Taiwan's world-leading car steering wheel company. By analyzing the 16 important process sensor data installed in each casting machine, the five experimental results show that the NNHP-GA recommendation system can successfully predict the hardness of the steering wheel's wrapping layer and recommend appropriate process parameters (e.g., sensors S1-vulcanization time, S2-mold temperature, S5-A.P. pressure, S6-B.I. pressure, and "pressurization time") under a specific hardness target. The manufacturing company may employ the NNHP-GA model to build a process parameter recommendation system and increase the quality of process parameter setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aims to examine prosodic sensitivity in Chinese children with dyslexia and its relation to Chinese reading in children with and without dyslexia. A total of 172 Chinese children from third grade to sixth grade in Taiwanese primary schools were recruited. Thirty (14 male) children were identified as having dyslexia, and the remaining children (N = 142; 67 male) were typically developing children matched with those with dyslexia as carefully as possible with respect to school, grade, and gender. Our results indicated that group differences were found for all three types of prosodic sensitivity. Moderation analyses showed that group had no significant interaction with prosodic sensitivity in predicting Chinese reading, so the participants in the two groups were combined in the following analyses. The results of the stepwise regression analyses showed that only lexical tone awareness could significantly predict Chinese character reading after controlling for phonological awareness, while only intonation awareness could significantly predict reading comprehension after controlling for Chinese character reading. The results provide preliminary evidence on the issue of prosodic sensitivity in Chinese children with dyslexia and its role in Chinese reading, which might provide a novel approach to the teaching of Chinese languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students with learning disabilities meet difficulties in cognitive abilities that are likely to affect their learning, especially online learning. Online learning usually lacks efficient face-to-face monitoring and leads to poor learning outcomes; in this case, students' self-regulated learning in an online environment matter. However, Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) status remains unclear for those with learning disabilities and how their working memory and processing speed affect self-regulated learning. A total of 147 undergraduate students were recruited from three public and four private universities in Taiwan to join this study, and they completed a self-reported questionnaire and several psychological measures. Our results revealed significant differences in SRL features between typically developing Chinese undergraduates and those with learning disabilities in an online environment. Compared to the students with learning disabilities, typically developing students outperformed in metacognitive skills, time management, environmental structuring, and persistence. Help-seeking was comparable between both groups. Working memory significantly contributed to SRL in all students, whereas processing speed only significantly influenced SRL in students with learning disabilities. The findings of this study have important implications for educators, researchers, and instructional designers aiming to optimize online learning experiences and support, especially from the perspective of SRL, for all students, particularly those with learning disabilities. • Cognitive deficits and online SRL of learning disabilities are unexplored in Chinese. • Students learning disabilities underperformed in all features of online SRL. • Working memory significantly contributed to SRL in two groups of students. • Processing speed significantly influenced SRL in students with learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the mediating effect of processing speed on the relationship between state anxiety and reading comprehension in Chinese children with and without reading disabilities (RD). A total of 53 Chinese children with RD and 66 typically developing children were administered cognitive and noncognitive measures. We found that the two groups had distinct patterns of state anxiety and processing speed. A significant indirect effect of state anxiety on reading comprehension through processing speed was found only in children with RD. Our findings contribute to filling a research gap and provide evidence to front‐line practitioners for adapting the teaching and measures for Chinese children with RD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the learning strategies that university students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) report using in the Chinese language context. Participants were 105 first‐year undergraduate students with SLD and 134 typically developing peers. Three questionnaires about reported reading/writing difficulties, metacognitive knowledge, and learning strategies were administered. Students with SLD reported using fewer learning strategies than students without SLD. The use of writing/research skills, which are the skills used to research topics from various sources in different ways (e.g., organizing writing projects, and monitoring for errors), significantly negatively predicted the reported reading/writing difficulties in both groups. These findings help expand our understanding of which learning strategies are useful for students with SLD and university instructors use more suitable techniques to facilitate the learning of these students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to compare anxiety and depression among male and female Chinese children with and without reading disabilities (RDs) and to examine the diverse impacts of anxiety and depression on children's reading comprehension. A total of 132 Chinese children from third to sixth grade living in Taiwan were recruited; half had RD, and the other half were typically developing children. Our results from the first analysis revealed that the anxiety level of female children with RD was significantly higher than that of the other three groups of participants, while the depression level of typically developing children was significantly lower than that of children with RD in general. Additionally, our results regarding the predictive abilities of gender and anxiety for reading comprehension as well as the moderating effect of gender on the ability of anxiety to predict reading comprehension were all statistically significant for the typically developing group but not the RD group. These differences between these two groups were further confirmed by multi-group analysis. Our results enhance the existing knowledge on Chinese children with RD and can increase practitioners' awareness of the possibility of higher levels of anxious and depressive symptoms among these children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of test anxiety on academic difficulties has been investigated in typically developing students, but the mechanism underlying the influence remains unclear, especially for those with specific learning disabilities (SpLDs). This study examined the role of metacognition in the relationship between test anxiety and literacy difficulties among Chinese typically developing adolescents as well as those who have been identified as having an SpLD and significant literacy difficulties (i.e., typically functioning SpLD) and without significant literacy difficulties (i.e., high-functioning SpLD) in Taiwan. A total of 238 first-year undergraduate students were recruited from eleven universities in South Taiwan. Among 238 students, 105 were identified to have SpLDs, and 133 were typically developing students. These students were asked to complete questionnaires on demographics, test anxiety, metacognition, and literacy difficulties (i.e., reading and writing). Structural equation modeling analyses showed that test anxiety among Chinese adolescents was linked to literacy difficulties but that only high-functioning and typically functioning students with SpLDs experienced a direct effect (without mediation by other factors). For those without SpLDs, the influence of test anxiety on literacy difficulties was not direct but significantly mediated by metacognition. Various components of these students' metacognition had mediating effects on different literacy difficulties. Test anxiety might influence the reading and writing difficulties of typically developing adolescents and those with typically functioning and high-functioning SpLDs through different mechanisms. Moreover, teachers at the university level are encouraged to consider students' test anxiety and metacognition when preparing their teaching materials. [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]

This study examined the extent to which Chinese children with dyslexia show temporal processing deficits in addition to deficits in various forms of attention. In total, 104 Chinese children in primary school (Grades 3–6) were recruited in Taiwan. Half of the children were identified as having dyslexia, and the other half were typically developing children who were matched by gender, IQ, and age with the children with dyslexia. Our results indicated that Chinese children with dyslexia performed significantly worse on tasks of temporal processing, selective attention, and switching attention. Furthermore, both visual and auditory temporal processing, in addition to various attention types, could be significant distinguishing predictors between the two groups. Moreover, we found that visual temporal processing, but not auditory temporal processing, significantly contributed to Chinese character reading. This study was among the first to confirm the unique role of visual temporal processing in Chinese character reading. [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]

With the vast amount of capital invested in the wafer fab facility, how to effectively utilize the capacity is always a crucial challenge for semiconductor capacity planners. Currently, static capacity planning approach is widely applied to estimate the planned capacity; however, fab management believes that the ideal planned capacity is too optimistic and unachievable since many production constraints and the impact of abnormal events (e.g., machine breakdown) are not considered. Therefore, a managerial question must be solved: "What is the reasonable capacity plan?" Hence, this paper aims to develop an object-oriented capacity analysis and planning simulation (CAPS) model, which takes into account the production constraints, the operation characteristics of machine tools (e.g., multi-chamber), and the dispatching rules applied in a full-scale wafer fab. Then, capacity planners may employ CAPS model to study the impact of the available time (AT) and its fluctuation of critical machine tools to fab overall capacity and output performance (e.g., wafer out, utilization, work in process (WIP)); a reasonable planned capacity may be generated. Consequently, fab managers only need to watch attentively on the key machine tools, which will cause high impact on the throughput, and keep their promised AT level or increase AT level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to investigate the development of visual and auditory temporal processing among children with and without dyslexia and to examine the roles of temporal processing in reading and reading-related abilities. A total of 362 Chinese children in Grades 1–6 were recruited from Taiwan. Half of the children had dyslexia, and the other half were typically developing children who matched the dyslexic group on age, intelligence, and gender. Our results indicate that for typically developing children, the visual and auditory modalities follow the same developmental trend: The children in first and second grades performed significantly worse than the older children. Among the children with dyslexia, however, significant improvements in the visual modality were observed with increasing age. Furthermore, although both modalities were important for all reading-related abilities and for Chinese character reading in first and second grades, the visual modality significantly predicted only orthographic knowledge and Chinese character reading in third and fourth grades. In contrast, the auditory modality affected only phonological awareness. In fifth and sixth grades, only visual temporal processing slightly contributed to the orthographic knowledge and Chinese character reading of the dyslexic group. Also, the relationship between temporal processing and Chinese character reading is strongly influenced by age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the associations between adolescent psychological distress (i.e., depression, anxiety, and somatization), school violence, and cyberbullying have been examined using cross-sectional data, little evidence from longitudinal panel data exists to determine the temporal association. A two-wave longitudinal panel data with a 10-month interval were obtained from a random sample of 487 Chinese junior high school students (grades 7–9) in Tianjin in Mainland China. The cross-lagged panel analysis showed that adolescent psychological distress in the first wave of the survey was significantly associated with subsequent school violence against peers and teachers in the second wave but not in the opposite direction. Student psychological distress in the first wave of the survey was not significantly associated with cyberbullying perpetration in the second wave and vice versa. The findings suggested that adolescent psychological distress was a risk factor rather than the consequence of violence against peers and teachers in school. However, the temporal associations between adolescent psychological distress and cyberbullying perpetration were non-significant. These findings were relevant to both sex groups. The findings may imply that potential interventions and policies to prevent students from committing school violence should consider reducing students' psychological distress as one of the core elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes two studies that examined the lexical tone awareness of Chinese children both with and without dyslexia at different primary school ages. Study 1 examined the contributions of lexical tone awareness to distinguish children with and without dyslexia with respect to their Chinese character reading skills. Two hundred and seventy Chinese children participated in Study 1. Ninety of these were children with dyslexia (equally recruited from second, fourth, and sixth grades). Moreover, ninety children functioned as a chronological-age control group, and an additional ninety children functioned as a reading-level control group. The participants were tested for nonverbal intelligence, Chinese character reading, and cognitive-linguistic skills and lexical tone awareness. Our results revealed a later developmental ceiling in Chinese children with dyslexia than in those without dyslexia. Furthermore, children’s lexical tone awareness could serve to distinguish children with dyslexia from typically developing children in all primary school years. Study 2 compared the lexical tone awareness and Chinese character reading skills of Chinese children with dyslexia both before and after introducing the Perceptual Training Method. The participants in this study consisted of all the participants with dyslexia from Study 1, and the measurements were the Chinese character reading test and the lexical tone awareness task from Study 1. Our results revealed that only second-grade children with dyslexia gained substantially from the training on both lexical tone awareness and character naming, whereas those in the fourth grade obtained a significant improvement only on lexical tone awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the performance of prosodic sensitivity among Chinese students from nine to fifteen years as well as its contribution to reading comprehension. For this study, we recruited 181 Chinese children with typical development from 9 to 15 years in Taiwan. Fifty-five were 9–10 years, 53 were 11–12 years, and the other 62 were 13–15 years. They were tested for prosodic sensitivity, phonological processing, Chinese character reading, and reading comprehension. Our results indicated clear age differences in two prosodic sensitivities: – the youngest group performed significantly worse than the other two groups. Additionally, our results showed that prosodic sensitivity significantly contributed to reading comprehension for only the two older groups. Theoretically, our results shed light on the role of prosodic sensitivity, especially above the character level, in Chinese reading comprehension. Teachers and instructors should consider prosodic sensitivity when preparing interventions for reading comprehension. • Chinese students develop prosodic sensitivity from 9 to 10 years old. • There are bigger age differences in most phonological processing than in prosodic sensitivity. • Prosodic sensitivity was found to contribute to reading from 11 to 15 years old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexually exploited adolescent girls are disproportionately affected by adverse psychosocial conditions, such as intra-familial child physical and sexual abuse, extra-familial violence and sexual assault, alcohol and drug use, and suicide. Syndemic theory suggests that these adverse psychosocial or syndemic conditions are concentrated and co-occurring in socially marginalized populations, including sexually exploited adolescents, and increase their sexual health risks, including pregnancy, abortion, and the acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). To examine clusters of syndemic conditions, latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to classify 335 sexually exploited girls in Taiwan into subgroups based on their probability of experiencing each syndemic condition. We used syndemic class membership to predict their sexual health outcomes, specifically pregnancy, abortion, and the acquisition of STDs. The results of LCA revealed three classes, which were "low-risk syndemic," "moderate-risk syndemic," and "high-risk syndemic." The risk of acquisition of STDs among sexually exploited girls in the "high-risk syndemic class" and "moderate-risk syndemic class" was 239% and 135% higher, respectively, than the risk of acquisition of STDs among sexually exploited girls in the "low-risk syndemic class." Differences between these three classes in pregnancy and abortion were not significant. Our findings support the syndemic theory that a pattern of syndemic conditions is associated with an increased risk of acquiring STDs. Interventions aimed at reducing the acquisition of STDs among sexually exploited girls in Taiwan should adopt a comprehensive approach to address co-occurring conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on (1) comparing dyslexic and typically developing children's cognitive and behavioural inhibitory abilities; (2) examining the relationship between word recognition, inhibition, and working memory in dyslexic and typically developing children by correlation, regression and path analyses. Participants in the present study were sampled from 3rd and 4th graders in Taiwan. Results indicated that dyslexic and typically developing children did not significantly differ in behavioural inhibition. In contrast, dyslexic children showed significantly lower levels of cognitive inhibition compared to typically developing children. Dyslexic children also showed that only cognitive inhibition significantly contributed to their word recognition, and typically developing children showed similar phenomenon. Finally, models of dyslexic and typically developing children's working memory, inhibition and word recognition were similar in that working memory and cognitive inhibition significantly contributed to word recognition for both dyslexic and typically developing children. Moreover, the contribution of the combination of working memory and inhibition was greater than the contribution of only inhibition; both of typically developing and dyslexic children's working memory showed more contributions than inhibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present study focuses on classifying developmental dyslexia by combining two famous models, the dual-route model and the triangle model of Chinese reading, re-examining validity of the subtypes, and observing the error types of word recognition for each subtype. Sixty-sixth graders with dyslexia in Chinese and 45 sixth graders who were matched by age and IQ with the dyslexic group were involved in the present study. Twelve (20%) sixth graders from the dyslexic group were classified as having phonological dyslexia, 11 (18.3%) were classified as surface dyslexia, 12 (20%) were classified as deep dyslexia, and five (8.3%) of them were classified as displaying more than one kind of deficit. Besides, still more than half (31; 51.7%) of the dyslexic group did not belong to any subtypes here. These subtypes had a good validity based on comparison of their phonological awareness, orthography, and semantics. Finally, for their error types of word recognition, both children with multiple-deficit dyslexia and children with non-subtype dyslexia showed a proportional pattern of six kinds of errors. Children with phonological dyslexia showed more phonetic errors and analogy errors, children with surface dyslexia showed more visual errors and analogy errors, and children with deep dyslexia showed more semantic errors and selective errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a solar cell industry scheduling problem, which is similar to traditional hybrid flowshop scheduling (HFS). In a typical HFS problem, the allocation of machine resources for each order should be scheduled in advance. However, the challenge in solar cell manufacturing is the number of machines that can be adjusted dynamically to complete the job. An optimal production scheduling model is developed to explore these issues, considering the practical characteristics, such as hybrid flowshop, parallel machine system, dedicated machines, sequence independent job setup times and sequence dependent job setup times. The objective of this model is to minimise the makespan and to decide the processing sequence of the orders/lots in each stage, lot-splitting decisions for the orders and the number of machines used to satisfy the demands in each stage. From the experimental results, lot-splitting has significant effect on shortening the makespan, and the improvement effect is influenced by the processing time and the setup time of orders. Therefore, the threshold point to improve the makespan can be identified. In addition, the model also indicates that more lot-splitting approaches, that is, the flexibility of allocating orders/lots to machines is larger, will result in a better scheduling performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Investigating the effect of interesting figures for normal, ADHD, and dyslexic students. [•] ADHD group performed the worst in sustained attention in recognizing geometric-figure. [•] ADHD group got less improvement from interesting-figure in selective attention than others. [•] Selective attention of dyslexic group got significant improvement from interesting-figure. [•] Sustained attention of ADHD group got significant improvement from interesting-figure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study presents an examination of learner-generated drawing for different reading comprehension subtypes of dyslexic students and control students. The participants were 22 phonological dyslexic students, 20 orthographic dyslexic students, 21 double-deficit dyslexic students, and 45 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control students. The major evaluation tools included word recognition task, orthographic task, phonological awareness task, and scenery texts and questions. Comparisons of the four groups of students showed differences among phonological dyslexia, orthographic dyslexia, double-deficit dyslexia, and the chronological age control groups in pre- and posttest performance of scenery texts. Differences also existed in relevant questions and the effect of the learner-generated drawing method. The pretest performance showed problems in the dyslexic samples in reading the scenery texts and answering relevant questions. The posttest performance revealed certain differences among phonological dyslexia, orthographic dyslexia, double-deficit dyslexia, and the chronological age control group. Finally, all dyslexic groups obtained a great effect from using the learner-generated drawing, particularly orthographic dyslexia. These results suggest that the learner-generated drawing was also useful for dyslexic students, with the potential for use in the classroom for teaching text reading to dyslexic students. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present study presents a comparison of the cognitive inhibition abilities of dyslexic, dyscalculic, and control students. The participants were 45 dyslexic students, 45 dyscalculic students, and 45 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control students. The major evaluation tools included six cognitive inhibition tasks which were restructured during principal component analysis into three categories: graph inhibition, number inhibition, and word inhibition. Comparisons of the 3 groups of students revealed that in graph inhibition, dyscalculic students performed worst of the 3 groups, with dyslexic students also performing worse than control students in this category. For number inhibition, the control students’ performances were equal to those of dyslexic students, with both groups performing better than dyscalculic students. For word inhibition, control students’ performances were equal to those of dyscalculic students; both groups had shorter response times and lower incorrect rates than dyslexic students. These results suggest the complexity of the different cognitive inhibition abilities displayed by dyslexic, dyscalculic, and control students. However, some regular patterns occurred. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study focused on a comparison of the visuo-spatial abilities (correct rate and speed) between dyslexic and normal students in Taiwan and Hong Kong. There were a total of 120 10–12 year old students. Thirty students had been diagnosed as dyslexic in Taiwan (T.W. dyslexia) and thirty students had been diagnosed as dyslexic in Hong Kong (H.K. dyslexia). Overall, 30 of the Taiwanese participants (T.W. normal) and 30 of the Hong Kong participants (H.K. normal) had received no special education. Dyslexic individuals were diagnosed by the doctors’ clinical determination. The material was designed using Autodesk 3ds Max. The participants rotated 3D figures by themselves to find a ball. The results indicated that there was very little difference between dyslexic and normal students. However, the most significant difference between dyslexic and normal student was answering speed, especially in the combined data and the male data. An one-way ANOVA test indicated that in terms of rate and answering speed there was no difference between the H.K. and the T.W. dyslexics. Similar results were also found for the students with normal reading abilities in T.W. and H.K. The criterions for defining the visuo-spatial abilities of dyslexia students appear to be similar in Taiwan and Hong Kong. In addition, there is no difference between students’ visuo-spatial abilities even though Chinese literacy instructions differed in the two areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the importance of the phonological coding system (PCS) by examining the possible moderation effect of knowledge of the PCS on the predictiveness of auditory temporal processing (ATP) for Chinese character reading. Eighty typically developing Chinese children in the first and second grades in Taiwan were recruited, and various cognitive and literacy ability tasks were administered. The results revealed that knowledge of the PCS served as a significant moderator of the association between ATP and Chinese character reading, that is, the significant prediction from ATP to Chinese character reading was observed only in those with high knowledge of the PCS but not those with low knowledge of the PCS. Additionally, we further demonstrated diverse ability levels in phonological processing as it contributes to Chinese character reading among individuals with higher and lower knowledge of the PCS. Specifically, ATP as well as phonological awareness significantly predicted Chinese character reading for those with high knowledge of the PCS, while only verbal short-term memory served as a significant predictor of Chinese character reading for those with low knowledge of the PCS. Our results show that individuals with different levels of knowledge of the PCS may demonstrate different ability levels in phonological processing in their Chinese character reading, which suggests that the need for teaching approaches suited to students with diverse learning experiences should be acknowledged. • Auditory temporal processing can only conditionally contribute to Chinese reading • Knowledge of phonological coding system serves as the significant moderator. • Auditory temporal processing could predict Chinese character reading for higher group • Phonological awareness as well is a significant predictor for higher group • Only verbal short-term memory served as a significant predictor for lower group [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the cross-sectional relationships between reading-related affective and cognitive factors and reading skills among adolescents with and without dyslexia. Participants were 120 Chinese-speaking eighth graders, including 60 adolescents with dyslexia and 60 typically developing adolescents from Hong Kong, China. Adolescents completed questionnaires on general anxiety, reading anxiety, and reading self-concept. They were also assessed on measures of rapid digit naming, verbal working memory, word reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The results showed that readers with dyslexia reported higher levels of general anxiety and reading anxiety and lower levels of reading self-concept than typical readers. They also showed difficulties in rapid digit naming and verbal working memory. Importantly, controlling for rapid digit naming and verbal working memory, reading self-concept was uniquely associated with word reading and reading fluency for readers with and without dyslexia. Furthermore, reading anxiety and reading self-concept were uniquely associated with reading comprehension for the two groups of readers. The findings point to the importance of considering affective factors when examining the reading skills of Chinese readers and the utility of targeting these factors when supporting the learning of adolescents with and without dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research has shown that paired associate learning (PAL) plays an important role in children's word reading across different languages. However, little is known about the construct of PAL and its relationship with word reading in Chinese children. Methods: A total of 204 second‐year kindergarten children from Mainland China were assessed on measures of PAL, including the four mapping conditions of PAL: visual–verbal, verbal–verbal, visual–visual and verbal–visual PAL. Tasks of working memory (WM), inhibitory control, visual‐motor integration (VMI), phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge and Chinese word reading were also administered to these children. Results: Our results showed that WM, VMI and phonological awareness were unique predictors of PAL, whereas inhibitory control and orthographic knowledge were not. Furthermore, PAL showed an independent contribution to Chinese word reading after controlling for phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. The mediation analysis showed that PAL was a significant mediator of the association between different cognitive‐linguistic skills and Chinese word reading. Conclusion: Paired associate learning contributes to Chinese word reading over and above phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Findings underscore the potential importance of PAL, as distinct from other cognitive‐linguistic skills, for understanding variability in early reading development. Highlights: What is already known about this topicStudies have shown the significant role of PAL in predicting word reading in Chinese.The association between PAL and word reading has been typically interpreted within the phonological processing framework. What this paper addsPAL is a complex construct that involves a wide range of cognitive‐linguistic skills: working memory (WM), visual‐motor integration and phonological awareness.PAL showed a unique contribution to Chinese word reading after controlling for phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge.PAL was found to be a significant mediator of the association between different cognitive‐linguistic skills and Chinese word reading. Implications for theory, policy or practicePAL may be an important aspect of sound and symbol learning for its relationship with word reading in Chinese, suggesting that PAL is an important contributing factor to word‐level reading development.It is possible that using PAL tasks such as mapping sounds with novel animals and/or characters and word games may promote children's word reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a hypothesized link between family conflict and school bullying perpetration, previous findings on the direct association have been inconsistent. It has been argued that affiliation with delinquent peers may be a potential psychosocial mechanism mediating the relationships between family conflict and school perpetration. However, such a proposition has not been examined employing longitudinal panel data. Using longitudinal panel data (two waves with a 9-month interval) from Hong Kong collected from 424 lower secondary students (grades 7–9), this study examined how affiliation with delinquent peers mediates the relationships between family conflict and adolescent school perpetration. The results of the half-longitudinal mediation model indicated no significant link between family conflict at T1 and school bullying perpetration at T2. However, family conflict at T1 was indirectly linked to school bullying perpetration at T2 through affiliation with delinquent peers. The findings imply that affiliation with delinquent peers mediates the association between family conflict and adolescent school bullying perpetration. The findings provide insights into the future development of policies and interventions to reduce school bullying perpetration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has suggested that psychological distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, and somatization) is associated with student victimization by teachers. The direction and causality of this relationship have not yet been empirically supported. This study examined longitudinal associations between adolescent psychological distress (anxiety, depression, and somatization) and student victimization by teachers among 419 adolescents in grades 7–9 of secondary schools in Hong Kong. A self-administered questionnaire was conducted to collect student self-reported information about their experiences of victimization by teachers and their psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, and somatization, at two time points separated by a 9-month interval. A cross-lagged panel analysis provided evidence for the contribution of depression, anxiety, and somatization to later victimization by teachers. These findings were also relevant for male and female adolescents. The findings suggest that psychological distress, such as depression, anxiety, and somatization, is a risk factor predicting student victimization by teachers rather than the consequences of exposure to teacher violence. The results support the importance of reducing adolescent depression, anxiety, and somatization symptoms in future intervention programs to prevent them from being victimized by teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dyslexia is developed by neurobiological in origin which is categorized as learning disorder that affect the ability to read, spell, write and speak. The most common dyslexia symptom can easily be identified through the handwriting pattern. There are many intelligence and computational methods that have been proposed, and they have provided various and different performance to evaluate the proposed system ability. However, system performances are varied and nonstandardized in each assesment on dyslexic children to validate the presence of dyslexia symptom. The recent deep learning models have been employed to improve the assesment performance and (the models/they have shown) shows significant output to detect and classify the present of dyslexia symptoms among school children. Therefore, there is a crucial need in deep learning, specifically for Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to validate performances of different networks, so that the most performed CNN could be a bench mark in evaluation to detect such symptom. This study aims to compare different deep learning networks specifically the CNN models to validate its performance in terms of the capability to classify dyslexic handwriting among school children. This study is proposed to compare different CNN models such as CNN-1, CNN-2, CNN-3 and LeNet-5. The proposed methods to compare the CNN performances are developed by using Jupyter notebook as platform. Meanwhile, keras is the higher-level API framework to provide a more flexible way for defining models. It specifically allows to define multiple input or output models as well as models that share layers. The tensorflow is also used for machine learning applications such as neural networks. Before that, the dataset of handwriting image is preprocessed by the augmentation process which includes the rotation of all images. CNN models have shown significant performance and provided sufficient results of performance with more than 87% of accuracy in classifying the potential dyslexia symptom based on handwritten images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that inhibition interacts with visual temporal processing (VTP), the past evidence regarding the influence of VTP on the Chinese character reading of children with dyslexia may not disclose the whole picture without considering inhibition. Thus, the present study is among the first to investigate VTP and cognitive inhibition as well as their relationships to Chinese character reading. We compared the performances of 62 Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia in primary school (n = 62, Mage = 11.36 years) on VTP and inhibition tasks to those in a chronological-age-matched group (CA; n = 62, Mage = 11.57 years) and reading-level-matched group (RL; n = 62, Mage = 8.98 years). The results revealed that children with dyslexia performed worse than both the CA-matched and RL-matched groups in VTP and inhibition after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, and attention. Moreover, the relationship between VTP and Chinese character reading was moderated by inhibition in children with dyslexia. VTP is positively related to Chinese character reading, but this relationship is observed only at higher levels of inhibition. Our results suggest that inhibition plays a potential role in VTP and Chinese character reading, especially for those with dyslexia whose proficiency in inhibition is not as intact as that of typically developing children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous cross-sectional research suggested a link between parental corporal punishment, school violence, and cyberbullying among adolescents. However, their temporal relationships remain unclear. This study used longitudinal panel data to examine the temporal relationships between parental corporal punishment, adolescent school violence against peers and teachers, and cyberbullying perpetration. Seven hundred and two junior high school students from Taiwan participated. A probability sample and two waves of longitudinal panel data collected a nine-month apart were analyzed. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect students' self-reported information about their experiences of parental corporal punishment, perpetration of school violence against peers and teachers, and cyberbullying. Parental corporal punishment at Time 1 predicted violence against school peers, violence against teachers, and cyberbullying perpetration at Time 2; however, these three behaviors at Time 1 did not predict parental corporal punishment at Time 2. These findings applied to both sex groups, although the effects of parental corporal punishment on violence against teachers were slightly stronger for boys than girls. Parental corporal punishment is a predictor rather than an outcome of adolescent school violence against peers and teachers and cyberbullying. Policies and interventions need to target parental corporal punishment to prevent adolescents from engaging in violence against peers and teachers and cyberbullying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon nanotube field emission backlight (CNT-BLU) is promising to replace traditional backlighting devices in liquid crystal display (LCD) industry. This study reports a laser irradiation process to enhance field emission properties of buckypaper, a thin sheet of high-loading carbon nanotube network. The scanning laser treated the selected region of buckypaper to activate CNT emitters. The improvement of phosphorescence luminance intensity, uniformity, and the reduction of turn-on field were achieved by adjusting machining parameters of laser power, laser lens motion speed, laser resolution, laser beam size, and pattern orientation. Design of experiment and response surface methodology provided ways to rapidly search the feasible laser parameter setting for processing buckypaper field emitters and improving field emission properties within fewer experimental runs. 25−1 Fractional fracotrial design presented the initial models of five repsponses. In addition, the face-centered central composite design is applied since the 25−1 factional factorial design showed curvature significance. It assisted to give the scientifical insight of the following conclusions. High-energy laser treatment damages and burns the CNTs into carbon oxide materials; furthermore, it loses the effective CNTs. Low-energy laser treatment performs CNT activation and produced low field emission performance. In this study, we succeeded to apply statistical analysis methods to understand the physics and mechanics of laser-activated buckypaper field emission and, furthermore, improve, optimize, and demonstrate performance by material selection, process development, and characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Cyber deviance among adolescents is prevalent in Taiwan. • Substance use and school bullying perpetration are associated with the presence of each form of cyber deviance. • Male gender, being senior, offline delinquency, and poor life satisfaction are associated with the presence of internet pornography and illegal website visits. • Females are more likely to engage in online flaming. • School bullying victimization is associated with the presence of internet pornography. Using a nationally representative dataset from Taiwan, this paper reports the prevalence of cyber deviance among adolescents and examines its association with gender, age, parental monitoring, substance use, offline delinquent behavior, school bullying and victimization, and life satisfaction. 1,928 students from junior high (grades 7–9) and senior high (grades 10–12) schools participated in this study. Students were given an anonymous questionnaire including items regarding basic demographics and deviant behaviors in cyber space. The results showed that cyber deviance is prevalent among Taiwanese adolescents. Of all forms, digital/media piracy was the most common, followed by illegal website visits and online flaming, and lastly, by internet pornography. Logistic regression analyses showed that substance use and school bullying perpetration are associated with the presence of all forms of cyber deviance. In addition, females were more likely to engage in online flaming. Male adolescents and seniors and those with offline delinquency history and a low level of life satisfaction were more likely to engage in internet pornography and visiting illegal websites. School bullying victimization was associated with the presence of internet pornography. However, the association between parental monitoring and each form of cyber deviance was non-significant. These findings implied that policy and intervention programs need to tackle cyber deviance at a national level. The potential policy and programs should target senior students and aim to promote adolescent life satisfaction and reduce student's risk of being bullied in school. To maximize their effectiveness, such programs should focus on tackling adolescents' problematic offline behaviors, including substance use, school bullying, and delinquency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]