Promoting effect of difference types of activation on output of Chinese characters in children with dictation difficulties

Abstract

In China, one of the most prevalent learning difficulties for children is dictation difficulty, or writing difficulty. This is due to the nature of Chinese characters-unlike alphabetic writing systems, Chinese characters do not follow the Grapheme-Phoneme Corresponding Rules. As a result, many Chinese children may find it difficult to bind the shape and prononciation of Chinese characters together, and their dictation or writing performance of Chinese characters would lower than other children. The object of the present study is to explore the cognitive mechanism of children with dictation difficulties by studying promoting effects of different types of activation on the output of Chinese characters of children with dictation difficulties. In the present study, 20 children with dictation difficulties and 18 controls were selected from grade 4 and 5 in a primary school. Activation-dictation task was adopted; Characters that were correctly read but wrongly written by each participant were used as dictation materials. Characters that were correctly read by each participant were used as activation stimulus, they were near homograph, homophone or both near homograph and homophone of dictation materials. Dictation accuracy was recorded. Results showed that dictation accuracies were significant different between two groups under homophone activation and both near homograph and homophone activation, dictation accuracy of dictation difficulties was significantly lower than controls. Differences of dictation accuracies did not reach significant level between two groups under near homograph activation. These results indicated that, compared to near homograph activation, near homograph and homophone activation significantly activated more on controls' dictation than children with dictation difficulties. That is, sound clues could facilitate controls' output performance, but not children with dictation difficulties. Besides, symbol clues could facilitate both dictation difficulties' and controls' output performance, which means children with spelling difficulties tend to represent Chinese characters as graphs in their mind.