Abstract: Reading is a multi-component skill that includes single word recognition, prose reading ability, reading comprehension and decoding ability. Although the majority of young children acquire reading skills without difficulty, as many as one in six children will be ‘at risk’ of failing to read at a level that enables them to access their school curriculum. And identifying reading failure in young children may help to prevent not only later educational underachievement but also the development of behavioral and emotional problems. Developmental dyslexia, broadly defined as a difficulty in learning to read and spell despite adequate intelligence and educational opportunity, is one of the most common childhood learning disabilities affecting approximately 5-10% of school-age children worldwide. Phonological processing (phonological awareness, rapid naming speed, and phonological memory) is known to underlie dyslexia, at least in English, but more recent theoretical propositions have suggested that the effects of phonological processing are likely universal. A fascination with comparing reading and mathematics achievement in Chinese language for children in China, and native speakers of English in USA has continued for some time in the history of developmental psychology. One of the earliest empirical studies compared the cognitive performance and academic achievement of Japanese, Chinese, and American children (Stevenson, etc., 1985). Obviously Chinese and Japanese children have a non-alphabetic orthography, and equally obviously significant cultural differences exist between American children and the other two groups. Chinese children surpassed Japanese and American children in reading scores; and both Chinese and Japanese children obtained higher scores in mathematics than the American children. Based on the above background, the author used the self-designed and recomposed linguistic programs in order to investigate the characteristics and differences of phonological processing and orthographic processing among children with dyslexia (DYS), grade 5 chronological age (CA) controls and grade 3 reading level (RL) controls. The results indicated that the DYS group performed significantly poorer than the CA and RA groups on both measures of phonological awareness and the orthographic processing; the DYS group performed poorer than the CA group but comparably to the RA group on both measures of rapid naming and phonological memory. As a result, among the Chinese developmental dyslexic children, the phonological awareness and orthographic processing deficit were the two major deficits and the developmental delay might result in the poor performance on measures of rapid naming and phonological memory. Meanwhile, the amount of dyslexic children with phonological awareness and orthographic processing deficits outweighed the ones with other deficits.

Key words: Chinese Reading Disability, Phonetic Processing, Orthographic Processing, Cognitive Processing Deficit

摘要： 本研究对汉语阅读障碍的加工缺陷进行探讨，期望有助于揭示语言加工的普遍性与特殊性，以及阅读障碍的成因，并可为后期的干预提供帮助。研究采用改编的言语认知测验对阅读水平匹配组与阅读障碍组和生理年龄匹配组进行比较后发现，阅读障碍组在语音意识和正字法加工任务上的成绩均明显差于生理年龄控制组和阅读水平匹配组；阅读障碍组在快速命名和语音记忆任务上的成绩不如生理年龄匹配组，仅达到阅读水平匹配组水平。因此，汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童存在语音意识和正字法加工缺陷，这两种缺陷可能是阅读障碍儿童面临的最主要的两大缺陷；阅读障碍儿童在快速命名和语音记忆上的不足可能是发展迟滞所致。同时，大多数的汉语阅读障碍儿童存在不止一种的认知缺陷。阅读障碍儿童在语音意识和正字法加工上存在缺陷的比例最高。

关键词: 汉语阅读障碍 语音加工 正字法加工 认知加工