Abstract: The present study aimed to examine the early development of visual word form recognition in Chinese children aged 3 to 6. The four types of stimuli were employed: Chinese characters, stroke combinations, character-like line drawings and line drawings. Each stimulus type consisted of 8 items. Chinese characters were simple or left-right structure with low and high frequency. Stroke combinations were constructed by randomly recombining the strokes of a Chinese character. Character-like line drawings were formed by transforming the strokes of a Chinese character into vertical and horizontal straight lines. Line drawings were constructed by recombining the lines of a character-like line drawing randomly. Participants were instructed to decide whether an item was a real Chinese character or not. To exclude potential confounding of subjective judgments, we analyzed the discriminative ability (d’) according to signal detection theory. Results showed that the main effect of age was significant (F（4，149）=61.99, p<.001, η2=.63). Results of the post-hoc test showed that children’s discriminative ability was increased with age (p<.01). For hit rate, the main effect of age was not significant (F（4，149）=2.25, p>.05, η2=.06), whereas for false alarm rate the main effect of age was significant (F（4，149）=85.42, p<.001, η2=.70). Results showed that the false alarm rate was increased with age (p<.001), suggesting that children’s ability to reject the non-character stimuli was enhanced with age. Further, we analyzed the accuracy of judging the three types of non-character stimuli. Results showed that for 3-year-olds, there was no difference between any two types of non-character stimuli (ps>.05). For 4- and 5- year-olds, the accuracy of judging the two types of line drawings was higher than that of the stroke combinations (ps<.001). In addition, the accuracy of judging the two types of line drawings in 5-year-olds was higher than that in 4-year-olds (ps<.001). For 6-year-olds, the accuracy of judging the line drawings was higher than that of the character-like line drawings and the stroke combinations (p<.05), while no difference was found between the character-like line drawings and the stroke combinations (ps>.05). Additionally, there was no difference in the accuracy of judging the two types of line drawings between 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds (ps>.05). However, the accuracy of judging the stroke combinations in 6-year-olds was higher than that in 5-year-olds (p<.001). In conclusion, the present study provides new evidence that Chinese children develop the awareness of different aspects of visual word form at an early age even before receiving formal reading training. The discriminative ability is increased with age, and its development is mainly due to the increasing ability to reject non-character stimuli. Age 5 and age 6 are crucial periods of early development of visual word form recognition.

Key words: Chinese character, visual word form cognition, stroke awareness, combined pattern awareness, development

摘要： 以汉字、一般线条图、似字线条图和笔画组合为材料，采用字典判断任务考察3-6岁儿童汉字字形认知的发展特点。结果发现儿童辨别汉字与似字符号的能力随年龄增长显著提高。3岁儿童较难区分汉字与各类似字符号。4-5岁儿童对汉字笔画特征有了一定意识。6岁儿童对汉字组合模式的认识显著提高。笔画意识出现较早且发展速度较快，组合模式意识出现较晚且发展速度较慢。5岁和6岁是汉字字形认知发展的重要时期。

关键词: 汉字, 字形认知, 笔画意识, 组合模式意识, 发展