Effects of cognitive flexibility on children’s Pinyin identification: Selective modulation across phonological interference conditions

Abstract

Cognitive flexibility (CF), a core component of executive function, plays a critical role in children’s early language and literacy development. However, it remains unclear whether and how CF selectively supports children’s identification of Pinyin syllables under different phonological interference conditions. The present study investigated the effects of CF on Pinyin identification amongst Chinese preschool children (N = 159) from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The children were divided into high and low CF groups based on standardised assessments. Using a forced-choice auditory identification paradigm, the participants were asked to identify target Pinyin syllables under four interference conditions: tone, onset, rime and unrelated controls. Reaction times for correct responses were analysed using MANCOVA, controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, working memory, Pinyin reading fluency and accuracy and phonological awareness. The study results showed that children with high CF responded significantly faster than those with low CF in the onset and rime interference conditions, with the effect being especially pronounced in the rime condition. In comparison, no significant differences were found for the tone or unrelated conditions. These findings suggest that CF selectively facilitates Pinyin identification when phonological cues are overlapping but discriminable, particularly for segmental contrasts. Therefore, these results provide new evidence supporting an integrative framework in which CF interacts with other executive processes in complex language tasks, as well as highlight the importance of targeting CF in early literacy interventions.