Research On The Cognitive Characteristics Of Chinese Children With Developmental Dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia, as a major type dyslexia in reading, refers to an individual who demonstrates observant low grades in reading levels and state of reading difficulties compared to his same age group under the conditions of:(i) no obvious differences in mental intelligence, motivation, living and educational environment. No obvious deficiencies in eyesight, hearing and neural systems. Research on Chinese dyslexia in China started late, and was short of a common standardized measurement tools. The operational definitions of dyslexia and inclusion criteria were not the same. Researchers have concerned on different perspectives of this field. And it makes the current research findings and achievements in this field is very inconsistent for the unique complexity of Chinese structure characteristics. It can be seen from the research achievements on the developmental dyslexia that the cause of dyslexia is varied, and dyslexia type is also different in phonetic or ideographic parts.Based on the systematic summary and analysis of previous studies, the research is conducted to have a dynamic comparison and analysis of the cognitive processing characteristics of pupils from three groups of grade two, grade three and grade five in elementary school at psycholinguistics level of phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, rapid naming, morphological awareness. It is aimed to explore the cognitive processing characteristics of both dyslexic pupils and normal ones in different grades as well as the possible critical development period of cognitive processing ability in different sub-types. Then some conclusions are drew below:(1) Significant differences exist on normal-reading groups(Grade2,3and5) and dyslexia groups in phonological processing, rapid naming, orthographic awareness, and the morphological awareness. Compared with the normal-reading groups, dyslexia groups show obvious difficulties and shortcomings in the cognitive tasks mentioned above. Moreover, with the grade growth, process of four basic reading and processing in normal-reading groups shows gradual maturing trends, and dyslexia groups showers a significant growth retardation.(2) In the process of rapid naming, it may be an important period for Grade2and3of dyslexia to develop rapid naming; in morpheme processing, grade3to grade5may be an important period of the development of morpheme consciousness for dyslexic children.(3) Orthographic awareness and morphological awareness are better predict for dyslexia children.(4) Phonological awareness defect may be the most important type of defect in Chinese dyslexia, while morphological awareness, orthographic awareness and rapid naming have an important impact on the performance of Chinese dyslexia.