The Relations Between Tone, Onset-Rime, Phoneme Awareness and Chinese Early Reading for 3-12 Years Old Children: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Abstract: Although phonological awareness has been found to be a strong predictor for children's reading achievement across alphabetic languages, its role in Chinese, a morpho-syllabic language, has not been consistently shown in the previous studies. The purpose of the present study was to synthesize studies that reported the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and Chinese word reading (CWR) and firstly attempt to explain the variability among studies in terms of linguistic unit (i.e., tone, syllable, onset/rime, phoneme) and cognitive operation complexity (such as isolation, blending, et al.). The final database for meta-analysis contained 59 studies with a total of 12514 participants aged 3-12. The results indicated that PA was significantly correlated with CWR (r=0.31). The additional moderator analyses showed that: 1) the effect size was consistent across age groups; 2) the paradigm with simple operation (i.e., detection and deletion, r=0.27-0.34) had stronger predictive effect on CWR; 3) PA at the tone (r=0.37) and syllable level (r=0.33) was more closely related to CWR for young children than onset-rime (r=0.27) and phoneme level (r=0.23). Obviously, the result supported the hypothesis of Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory.

Key words: phonological awareness, Chinese word reading, meta-analysis

摘要： 众多实证研究指出英语语音意识是鉴别儿童早期阅读能力（字词解码）的重要指标，然而跨语言研究对语音意识在阅读发展中的普适功能提出了质疑。从上世纪90年代至今，汉语语音意识在儿童早期阅读发展中的角色依然是个有争议的议题，因此本文采用元分析范式整合过往实证文献，并从测试任务的语音要素（音调、音节、声韵、音素）与操纵范式（检、删、隔、合等）解释导致语音意识与汉语字词阅读关系不一致的原因。本文共筛选出发表于1995年至2015年的59篇研究，提取了94个独立样本12514人，涵盖3-12岁不同年龄阶段的儿童。结果显示：（1）语音意识与汉语字词阅读呈现了显著的中度相关，且不因被试年龄和字词阅读任务类型而改变；（2）检、删两种范式下的语音意识的预测效应量远大于隔音和合音范式；（3）汉语语音意识的语音要素是一个重要的调节变量，音调辨析的预测效应量最大，其次是音节、声韵和音素，呈现了随语音单位变小而效应量变小的趋势，一定程度上亦验证了心理语言纹理假说的预期。

关键词: 语音意识, 汉语字词阅读, 元分析

CLC Number:

B844.1

WU Qiuping, CHENG Puiwan, LIU Xianghui. The Relations Between Tone, Onset-Rime, Phoneme Awareness and Chinese Early Reading for 3-12 Years Old Children: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2017, 15(5): 643-653.

伍秋萍, 郑佩芸, 刘相辉. 3-12岁儿童对汉语声、韵、调的意识与早期阅读的关系：基于元分析的证据[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2017, 15(5): 643-653.

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