The unique contributions of visual processing skill to Chinese oral reading fluency beyond phonological awareness: A pilot study

Background: Both phonological awareness (the ability to process and manipulate speech sounds) and visual processing skill (the ability to process visual stimuli) explain reading fluency in alphabetic languages. In Chinese reading, visual processing skill may be particularly important given the visual complexity and the lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. However, few studies examined the unique role of visual processing skill beyond phonological awareness in Chinese reading fluency, and the existing findings are mixed. In this study, we sought to clarify this link in Chinese children.

Method: A cross-sectional design was used among 31 native Mandarin Chinese-speaking, typically developing children in Grades 5-6 from lower-middle-class families across regions in Mainland China. Their phonological awareness and visual processing skill (the two predictor variables), as well as their abilities in oral reading fluency at the word and passage levels (the two outcome variables) were measured by four reliable and valid tasks adapted from published studies.

Results: We ran two sets of hierarchical regression models predicting each of the two outcome variables. In each model, children’s age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence were entered first (Step 1), followed by phonological awareness (Step 2), and lastly, visual processing skill (Step 3). The results consistently suggested that visual processing skill significantly explained 35.3% of the unique variances in oral reading fluency at the word level, and 23.5% in oral reading fluency at the passage level.

Conclusions: Visual processing skill appears to differentiate Chinese oral reading fluency, and the underlying mechanisms are warranted for future research. Copyright © 2023 by Association for Reading and Writing in Asia.