In the digital age, handwriting literacy has declined to a worrying degree, especially in non-alphabetic writing systems. In particular, Chinese (and also Japanese) handwriters have suffered from character amnesia ([Chinese characters omitted]), where people cannot correctly produce a character though they can recognize it. Though character…

Processing efficiency theory can explain the relationship between anxiety and academic success; however, its application to adults with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) remains unclear, especially in a nonalphabetic language, such as Chinese. This study investigated the effects of working memory and processing speed on the relationships…

The current study illustrated a mediation model of different aspects of family environmental factors in predicting short-term memory and social understanding in Chinese children. The study investigated how children's short-term memory and social understanding were predicted by family environment factors, including socioeconomic status, home…

The goal of the present study was to test theories about the extent to which individual differences in word reading align with those in spelling and the extent to which other cognitive and linguistic skills play different roles in word reading and spelling. Using data from 1,116 children ranging from 8 to 17 years, we modeled word reading and…

The ability to form a mental model of a text is an essential component of successful reading comprehension (RC), and purpose for reading can influence mental model construction. Participants were assigned to one of two conditions during an RC test to alter their purpose for reading: concurrent (texts and questions were presented simultaneously)…

The trend of podcast and audiobook listening is on the rise, thus paving the way for a new, popular learning environment. It is crucial to deliberate on the influence of multiple-text listening comprehension. This research aimed to explore the impact of conceptual network processing on multiple-text comprehension performance from the perspective…

Background: Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children may experience difficulties in word decoding development. Aims: We aimed to compare and predict the incremental word decoding development in first grade in Dutch DHH and hearing children, as a function of kindergarten reading precursors. Methods and procedures: In this study, 25 DHH, and 41…

Children's word problem competence is a major determinant of their career prospects. Abstract word (AW) comprehension and equal sign knowledge (ESK) are considered the foundation of discourse comprehension and pre-algebra skills, respectively. However, the link between AW and ESK in relation to the meaningful agent representative information…

Mind wandering occurs when a reader's thoughts are unrelated to the text's ideas. We examined the relation between mind wandering and readers' memory for text. More specifically, we assessed whether mind wandering inhibits the reader's development of the situation model and thus their ability to identify and recall the text's most central ideas.…

Previous research has demonstrated conflicting findings concerning orthographic access in older age. The current study examines whether older adults rely more heavily on stored knowledge while spelling, through testing of word concreteness. Forty-one younger (age 20-29), 41 middle age (age 45-55), and 40 healthy older adults (age 70-80) spelled 60…

Foreign language anxiety has influenced reading achievement in English as a second language learning (ESL). However, less is known about how foreign language anxiety affects Chinese students learning English as L2 and the interplay between foreign language anxiety and cognitive-linguistic factors on L2 reading performance. This longitudinal study…

The deep cloze test was developed by Jensen and Elbro (Read Writ Interdiscip J 35(5):1221-1237, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10230-w) to assess reading comprehension at the level of global situational understanding. In two independent studies, we examined potential contributors to students' scores on the deep cloze reading…

The objective for beginning writers is to learn how to generate alphabet-letters which are recognisable and easy to read. This study investigated the accuracy of Year 1 and 2 children's alphabet-letter-writing by evaluating their alphabet and orthographic knowledge, following evidence which identifies these skills as important for correctly…

This study aimed to investigate the meta-linguistic and executive function profile for different subtypes of reading difficulties (RD) among upper-elementary students. Based on 1,112 third- to fifth-grade Chinese-speaking children, we identified 72 with decoding difficulties (DD), 74 with comprehension difficulties (CD), and 29…

To investigate the longitudinal effects of two domain-general cognitive abilities, namely verbal working memory and visual search skill, on Chinese reading comprehension. To evaluate whether decoding and linguistic comprehension mediate such effects. A total of 202 first-grade Chinese-speaking children from mainland China (M[subscript]age =…