Chinese Ideograms as Intermediaries to Reading a b

Abstract

Chinese characters presented tachistoscopically to young readers of minimal reading ability and to young readers of better ability produce reliable differences in recognition thresholds in favor of the good readers. Simultaneous presentations of compared characters also reduces perceptual thresholds as compared to successive presentation with minimal readers being inferior to good readers on the successive task. Chinese characters have been used as intermediaries in reading and improved performance attributed to the fact that the Chinese characters are related to words as units rather than to phonemic elements as in the Roman alphabet. However, since visual factors also appear to be involved in recognition of Chinese characters in a manner distinguishing between minimal and good young readers, absence of phonemic word structure may not be responsible for the improvement arising from substitution of the Chinese for Roman script.

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