Holistic Or Analytic:Form Recognition Of Visual Word In Chinese Children Of 3 To 6 Years Old

The processing of Chinese character reflects the cognitive psychological processes of human beings, it also has a solid foundation of future learning and daily activities of children, and it also plays an important role to promote the development of children' thinking and creativity. The current view is that there are three stages for children' print consciousness. They are the processing stages of holistic shape, local composition and orthography. There has been a good range of researches of orthography currently. But the studies about the stage before orthographic processing are still scarce. On account of the stages of holistic shape and local composition are actually there. We explored the form recognition of visual word in Chinese in the perspective of children' development.This study had two researches about 3-6 years old children. In research 1, we explored the children'character recognition by whole character-component paradigm, and also explored the effect of space frequency to character processing. We also have done research 2. In this research, we explored the children'character recognition by complete composite paradigm and dealt with the material through the approach to upright, misaligned and inverted. The accurate rates were recorded by the computer.The main findings and conclusions of present investigation as follows:(1) The holistic and analytic processing capacity of 3-6 years old children gradually enhanced as the change of the age.(2) Whole character-component paradigm confirmed that the interaction between ages and target styles was significant,3-4 years old children had significant differences between whole character and component, but not the 5-6 years old children. The accurate rates of whole character paradigm were higher than that of component paradigm for 3-6 years old children. It showed that 3-4 years old children had an advantage in holistic processing. Analytic processing was emerged at the age of 5 years old.(3) Whole character-component paradigm confirmed that the interaction between ages and space frequency was significant. Only 3years old children had significant differences between 0-3.0cpd and 0-5.0cpd. It showed that space frequency was not a main factor for the whole character recognition for 3-6 years old children. The results further proved that the main way to character processing was holistic processing in children' early ages.(4) In the complete composite paradigm, the interaction between ages, congruency and target styles was significant,3-6 years old children had significant differences between congruent and incongruent in the target styles of upright, inverted and misalignment, The accuracy of congruent was higher than that of incongruent. It showed that holistic processing was the main process for 3-6 years old children. But their ability of analytic processing is not as well as adults.