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Lexical tone awareness among Chinese children with developmental dyslexia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2010

WING-SZE LI  and
CONNIE SUK-HAN HO
WING-SZE LI
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
CONNIE SUK-HAN HO*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Connie Suk-Han Ho, Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. tel: (852) 2241 5652; fax: (852) 2858 3518; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined the extent and nature of lexical tone deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Twenty Cantonese-speaking Chinese dyslexic children (mean age 8 ; 11) were compared to twenty average readers of the same age (CA control group, mean age 8 ; 11), and another twenty younger average readers of the same word reading level (RL control group, mean age 7 ; 4) on different measures of lexical tone awareness, rhyme awareness and visual–verbal paired-associate learning. Results showed that the Chinese dyslexic children performed significantly worse than the CA but not the RL control groups in nearly all the lexical tone and rhyme awareness measures. Analyses of individual performance demonstrated that over one-third of the dyslexic children showed a deficit in some aspects of tone awareness. Tone discrimination and tone production were found to correlate significantly with Chinese word reading. These findings confirm that Chinese dyslexic children show weaknesses in tone awareness.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , September 2011 , pp. 793 - 808
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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