Understanding Chinese children’s word reading by considering the factors from cognitive, psychological and ecological factors

The Role of Executive Functions in Lexical Processing During Reading Comprehension

“…Following the LQH framework, the three important lexical processing skills, namely orthographic awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary knowledge, were examined as they are essential for extracting meanings of Chinese words. The findings not only aligned with previous studies by demonstrating that EF is a significant predictor of Chinese reading comprehension (e.g., Cain et al, 2004; Cartwright et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2023), but also has suggested that EF could facilitate the young Chinese readers' comprehension by supporting their lexical processing of the representational features of Chinese words and binding these features to retrieve the word meanings precisely.…”

“…Relatedly, despite fewer empirical evidence supporting the role of EF in word reading process, extensive studies have shown that EF is one of the crucial factors accounting for individual differences in passage‐level reading comprehension (e.g., Cain et al, 2004; Cartwright et al, 2020; Hung & Loh, 2021; Liu et al, 2023; Slipp, 2021; Spencer et al, 2020; Zhang & Peng, 2023). Follmer (2018), using meta‐analysis approach, found that EF as an integrated mechanism moderately correlates with reading comprehension ( r = .36), irrespective of the age groups and the measures used to assess reading comprehension and EF.…”

“…Considering the complexity of lexical processing in Chinese, a growing number of studies has found that EF is indispensable in this process (e.g., Chung & McBride‐Chang, 2011; Liu et al, 2023; Ren et al, 2022). However, few studies have discussed the underlying mechanism of how EF operates on the lexical processing skills during reading comprehension.…”

“…Second, EF could assist readers in suppressing the ambiguities during word reading (Fung et al, 2020; Ren et al, 2022). In the context of Chinese reading, which has a considerable number of opaque words and less consistent grapheme–phoneme correspondence, interferences from misleading radicals of visually similar characters or ambiguous semantics of morphemes may affect efficient word reading (Liu et al, 2023). In addition, readers need inhibitory control to suppress the interference from irrelevant semantics among the morphemes (Huang et al, 2020).…”