Early literacy acquisition in logographic orthographies: Evidence from Chinese and Japanese.

• We examined the cognitive-linguistic predictors of early literacy development in Chinese and Japanese Kanji. • Phonological awareness was more strongly associated with word reading in Japanese than in Chinese. • RAN was more strongly associated with word reading in Chinese than in Japanese. • Morphological awareness was associated with literacy skills in both languages. • The nature of scripts modulates the relations between cognitive-linguistic skills and literacy skills even among logographic orthographies. We examined the cognitive-linguistic predictors of early literacy development and the extent to which they were similar or different across two logographic orthographies (Chinese and Japanese Kanji). Data from 167 Hong Kong Chinese children and 169 Japanese children were used. Children were tested on cognitive-linguistic skills (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming [RAN], morphological awareness, vocabulary) in Grade 1 and literacy skills (word reading and spelling) in Grades 1 and 2. Whereas the association of phonological awareness with word reading was significantly stronger in Japanese than in Chinese, the association of RAN with word reading was stronger in Chinese. Morphological awareness predicted literacy skills in both languages. Moreover, mediation analysis revealed that the effects of the cognitive-linguistic skills on later literacy skills were fully mediated by early literacy skills, except that morphological awareness directly predicted later spelling in Japanese. These findings suggest that the nature of writing systems can modulate the relationship between cognitive-linguistic skills and literacy skills, even when they share the logographic nature and use the same graphic symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]