Maternal mediation of writing in Chinese children

Dan LIN, Catherine MCBRIDE-CHANG, Dorit ARAM, Iris LEVIN, Yuen Man Rebecca CHEUNG, Yvonne Y. Y. CHOW, Liliana TOLCHINSKY

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

46 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Two scales of mothers’ mediation of their children's writing based on Aram and Levin (2001 Aram, D. and Levin, I. 2001. Mother-child joint writing in low SES. Sociocultural factors, maternal mediation and emergent literacy. Cognitive Development, 16(3): 831–852. [Crossref], , [Google Scholar] ) were developed and tested in 67 mother–child Hong Kong Chinese dyads in three grade levels – second-year kindergarten, third-year kindergarten, and first grade. With children's ages, grades, and non-verbal IQs, as well as mothers’ education levels statistically controlled in a regression equation, the four strategies of the ‘Print Mediation’ scale, a measure of mother–child joint writing productions, explained a unique 10% of the variance in children's word reading. These four strategies tended to change with age such that higher autonomy was more common among older children and lower autonomy was more prevalent among younger children. In a separate hierarchical regression equation, the ‘Literate Mediation’ scale, tapping specific writing strategies, explained a unique 8–11% of the variance in children's word reading. A prevalence of copying strategies tended to be negatively associated with reading skill and a prevalence of morphologically based strategies tended to be positively associated with reading skill, even apart from age and grade level. Findings demonstrate some strong developmental trends in the writing process but also suggest that a more analytic approach to Chinese character writing may be helpful for literacy development, even among the youngest children. Copyright © 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1286-1311
JournalLanguage and Cognitive Processes
Volume24
Issue number7/8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2009

Citation

Lin, D., McBride-Chang, C., Aram, D., Levin, I., Cheung, R. Y. M., Chow, Y. Y. Y., & Tolchinsky, L. (2009). Maternal mediation of writing in Chinese children. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24(7/8), 1286-1311. doi: 10.1080/01690960801970615

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Maternal mediation of writing in Chinese children'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.