Yuping Zhang

Developmental Trajectories of Reading Development and Impairment from Ages 3 to 8 Years in Chinese Children.

BACKGROUND Early prediction of reading disabilities in Chinese is important for early remediation efforts. In this 6-year longitudinal study, we investigated the early cognitive predictors of reading skill in a statistically representative sample of Chinese children from Beijing. METHOD Two hundred sixty-one (261) native Chinese children were administered seven language-related skills over three years between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Performances on these skills were then examined in relation to subsequent word reading accuracy and fluency. Individual differences in developmental profiles across tasks were then estimated using growth mixture modeling. RESULTS Four developmental trajectories were classified - the typical (control), catch-up (with low initial cognitive performances but adequate subsequent reading), literacy-related-cognitive-delay (with difficulties in morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and speeded naming and subsequent word recognition), and language-delay (relatively low across all tasks) groups. CONCLUSION Findings suggest that the combination of phonological awareness, rapid naming and morphological awareness are essential in the early prediction of later reading difficulties in Chinese children.

Phonological Skills and Vocabulary Knowledge Mediate Socioeconomic Status Effects in Predicting Reading Outcomes for Chinese Children

This study examined the relations among socioeconomic status (SES), early phonological processing, vocabulary, and reading in 262 children from diverse SES backgrounds followed from ages 4 to 9 in Beijing, China. SES contributed to variations in phonological skills and vocabulary in childrens early development. Nonetheless, early phonological and vocabulary abilities exerted equally strong and independent mediation of the SES effects on childrens reading achievement by the end of 3rd grade for this Chinese sample. These findings not only replicate studies in alphabetic languages but, because of their longitudinal nature, also demonstrate the potential for interventions focused on improving childrens early language skills, and at which ages these factors may have the greatest impact.

Tracing Children's Vocabulary Development from Preschool through the School-Age Years: An 8-Year Longitudinal Study.

In this 8-year longitudinal study, we traced the vocabulary growth of Chinese children, explored potential precursors of vocabulary knowledge, and investigated how vocabulary growth predicted future reading skills. Two hundred and sixty-four (264) native Chinese children from Beijing were measured on a variety of reading and language tasks over 8 years. Between the ages of 4 to 10 years, they were administered tasks of vocabulary and related cognitive skills. At age 11, comprehensive reading skills, including character recognition, reading fluency, and reading comprehension were examined. Individual differences in vocabulary developmental profiles were estimated using the intercept-slope cluster method. Vocabulary development was then examined in relation to later reading outcomes. Three subgroups of lexical growth were classified, namely high-high (with a large initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate), low-high (with a small initial vocabulary size and a fast growth rate) and low-low (with a small initial vocabulary size and a slow growth rate) groups. Low-high and low-low groups were distinguishable mostly through phonological skills, morphological skills and other reading-related cognitive skills. Childhood vocabulary development (using intercept and slope) explained subsequent reading skills. Findings suggest that language-related and reading-related cognitive skills differ among groups with different developmental trajectories of vocabulary, and the initial size and growth rate of vocabulary may be two predictors for later reading development.

Poor Readers of Chinese and English: Overlap, Stability, and Longitudinal Correlates

We tested the overlap in the bottom 25% of scorers (termed “poor readers”) in word reading in Chinese and English, respectively, among statistically representative groups of 8-year-olds from Hong Kong and Beijing in order to determine the chances of being a poor reader in English given that one was already a poor reader in Chinese. The overlap in the status of poor reader was 32% in Hong Kong and 40% in Beijing. For the Beijing sample only, we also examined longitudinal correlates of children who were poor readers of Chinese only, of English only, or poor readers in both, relative to controls at age 8. Poor readers of either Chinese or English scored the same on phonological awareness relative to controls, and poor readers of Chinese were lower than those who were poor readers of English on morphological awareness. Those children who were poor in both scored significantly lower in phonological awareness and morphological awareness, as well as slower in rapid automatized naming, over time, relative to the other groups. Results suggest that it is possible to be poor in reading of either Chinese or English or both and that the cognitive correlates of such difficulties may differ by orthography.

Association of the DYX1C1 Dyslexia Susceptibility Gene with Orthography in the Chinese Population

Several independent studies have supported the association of DYX1C1 with dyslexia, but its role in general reading development remains unclear. Here, we investigated the contribution of this gene to reading, with a focus on orthographic skills, in a sample of 284 unrelated Chinese children aged 5 to 11 years who were participating in the Chinese Longitudinal Study of Reading Development. We tested this association using a quantitative approach for Chinese character reading, Chinese character dictation, orthographic judgment, and visual skills. Significant or marginally significant associations were observed at the marker rs11629841 with childrens orthographic judgments at ages 7 and 8 years (all P values<0.020). Significant associations with Chinese character dictation (all P values<0.013) were also observed for this single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at ages 9, 10, and 11 years. Further analyses revealed that the association with orthographic skills was specific to the processing of specific components of characters (P values<0.046). No association was found at either SNP of rs3743205 or rs57809907. Our findings suggest that DYX1C1 influences reading development in the general Chinese population and supports a universal effect of this gene.

Association of DCDC2 Polymorphisms with Normal Variations in Reading Abilities in a Chinese Population.

The doublecortin domain-containing 2 (DCDC2) gene, which is located on chromosome 6p22.1, has been widely suggested to be a candidate gene for dyslexia, but its role in typical reading development over time remains to be clarified. In the present study, we explored the role of DCDC2 in contributing to the individual differences in reading development from ages 6 to 11 years by analysing data from 284 unrelated children who were participating in the Chinese Longitudinal Study of Reading Development (CLSRD). The associations of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DCDC2 with the latent intercept and slope of children’s reading scores were examined in the first step. There was significant support for an association of rs807724 with the intercept for the reading comprehension measure of reading fluency, and the minor “G” allele was associated with poor reading performance. Next, we further tested the rs807724 SNP in association with the reading ability at each tested time and revealed that, in addition to significant associations with the two main reading measures (reading fluency and Chinese character reading) over multiple testing occasions, this SNP also showed associations with reading-related cognitive skills, including morphological production, orthographic judgment and phonological processing skills (rapid number naming, phoneme deletion, and tone detection). This study provides support for DCDC2 as a risk gene for reading disability and suggests that this gene is also operative for typical reading development in the Han population.

ROBO1 polymorphisms, callosal connectivity, and reading skills.

The genetic effects on specific behavioral phenotypes are putatively mediated by specific neural functions. It remains unexplored how the axon‐guidance‐receptor gene ROBO1 influences reading performance through the neural system despite the identification of ROBO1 as a susceptibility gene for dyslexia. To address this issue, the present study recruited a group of children with a wide range of reading abilities. Two previously identified reading‐related ROBO1 polymorphisms were genotyped, and diffusion and structural MRI were acquired to measure the fiber microstructure of the corpus callosum (CC), the major white‐matter tract that connects inter‐hemispheric cortical regions. The results confirmed the significant influence of the ROBO1 polymorphisms on reading scores. The fiber microstructures of the midline‐CC segments around the genu and splenium were also affected by the ROBO1 polymorphisms. Moreover, a mediation analysis further revealed that the genu could significantly mediate the effects of the ROBO1 polymorphisms on word‐list reading performance, which suggests a ROBO1‐to‐genu‐to‐reading pathway. The genu‐linked cortical morphology, however, was not associated with either the ROBO1 polymorphisms or reading performance. These findings offer direct evidence supporting ROBO1‐callosum association in humans and also provide valuable insight into the functions of ROBO1 and the gene‐to‐brain mechanisms that underlie human reading. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2616–2626, 2017.

Understanding Chinese children's complex writing: Global ratings and lower-level mechanical errors

In the present study, we compared models of overall writing quality, in addition to differences in grammatical usage in this writing, between children from Beijing and Hong Kong societies. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) resulted in a five-element scoring system used to tap overall writing quality in the Beijing sample. In addition, Beijing and Hong Kong children showed certain differences in mechanical errors in their writings. For example, Beijing children exhibited fewer errors in word order and misnomers than did Hong Kong children, but Hong Kong children performed better in punctuation usage than Beijing children. Overall, the present study highlighted some patterns in overall writing quality and also common mechanical errors in Chinese writing among Chinese children.

Cover Image: The ROBO1 -Callosum-Reading Pathway

COVER ILLUSTRATION ROBO1 polymorphisms, callosal connectivity, and reading skills. The microstructural integrity of the corpus callosum (measured by diffusion MRI) was found to mediate the effects of two ROBO1 (a famous axon-guidance-receptor gene) polymorphisms on Chinese reading performance in childrenwith typical development. For more details, please see Sun et al. 2017 in this issue.