Corrigendum: Corpus of Mandarin Child Language: a preliminary study on the acquisition of semantic content categories in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1234525.].

Corpus of Mandarin Child Language: a preliminary study on the acquisition of semantic content categories in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers.

In studying language acquisition in children, sizable research studies have been focusing on the investigation of form and lexical semantics. This study aims to establish a child language database annotated both syntactically with part of speech and semantically with semantic content category to supplement the study of child language acquisition in the semantic domain beyond lexical level. The Corpus of Mandarin Child Language (CMCL) that documented the production of different semantic content categories by Mandarin-speaking children was established. Naturalistic language samples of 82 native Mandarin-speaking children aged 25-60 months, divided into three age groups, were obtained. The corresponding semantic content categories coded in each utterance were tagged according to previous studies, in addition to the annotations of part of speech. MLU and lexical diversity were examined and the usage and acquisition of different semantic content categories were also analyzed. The results regarding syntactic complexity and lexical diversity replicated the typical language acquisition pattern from previous studies, which supported the validity of the data obtained in the CMCL. To investigate the trajectory of acquisition of various semantic content categories by age, a 90% acquisition criterion was used. Our findings regarding the acquisition order of semantic content category were basically in line with previous studies in general, with some minor differences. This acquisition order observed is largely explained by the cognitive and syntactic complexity associated with the semantic content category, with additional influence from language specific properties and cultural specific factors of Mandarin. In addition, with the tags in both part-of-speech and semantic content category, the CMCL potentially provides a platform for examining the form-content interface in early child language acquisition, which also implies significantly on the theoretical and clinical ground.

Systematic language input improved productions of elaborated verb phrases of Cantonese-speaking children with language difficulties.

It has been well-documented that language input designed according to the principles of statistical learning can promote language acquisition among children with or without language disorder. Cantonese-speaking children with language disorder were reported to have difficulties using expanded verb phrases and prepositional phrases, but the corresponding intervention is relatively unexplored. The current study evaluated the efficacy of an intervention designed using the statistical learning principles to promote the acquisition of these two structures. A retrospective study of existing data collected from a total of 16 Cantonese-speaking children (four female; mean age = 6.70 years) with suspected language disorder was conducted. The participants were initially divided into the 'Treatment' and the 'Control' groups. A total of eight sessions of language treatment, which focused on giving systematic language input of expanded verb phrases and prepositional phrases, were conducted on each child. Results showed that the Treatment group produced significantly more expanded verb phrases in the post-treatment language samples, while the Control group did not. The final pre- and post-comparison conducted after the Control group also received treatment indicated overall significant increased number of expanded verb phrases produced across time. On the contrary, improvement in the production of prepositional phrases was not significant. It is suggested that the unique thematic roles coded by individual prepositions possibly restricted the generalisation effect of treatment, which explains the non-significant improvement across time. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.

Hong Kong Chinese character psycholinguistic norms: ratings of 4376 single Chinese characters on semantic radical transparency, age-of-acquisition, familiarity, imageability, and concreteness.

Several norms of psycholinguistic features of Chinese characters exist in Mandarin Chinese, but only a few are available in Cantonese or in the traditional script, and none includes semantic radical transparency ratings. This study presents subjective ratings of age-of-acquisition (AoA), familiarity, imageability, concreteness, and semantic radical transparency in 4376 Chinese characters. The single Chinese characters were rated individually on the five dimensions by 20 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong to form the Hong Kong Chinese Character Psycholinguistic Norms (HKCCPN). The split-half reliability and intra-class correlations testified to the high internal reliability of the ratings. Their convergent and discriminant patterns in relations to other psycholinguistic measures echoed previous findings reported on Chinese. There were high correlations for semantic radical transparency, imageability and concreteness, and moderate-to-high correlations for AoA and familiarity among subsets of items that had been collected in previous studies. Concurrent validity analyses showed convergence in predicting behavioral response times in various tasks (lexical decision, naming, and writing-to-dictation) when compared with other Chinese character databases. High predictive validity was shown in writing-to-dictation data from an independent sample of 20 native Cantonese speakers. Several objective psycholinguistic measures (character frequency, stroke number, number of words formed, number of homophones and number of meanings) were included in this database to facilitate its use. These new ratings extend the currently available norms in language and reading research in Cantonese Chinese for researchers, clinicians, and educators, as well as provide them with a wider choice of stimuli.

Measuring pragmatic competence of discourse output among Chinese-speaking individuals with traumatic brain injury.

OBJECTIVE: Discourse analysis is one of the clinical methods commonly used to assess the language ability of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, the majority of published analytic frameworks are not geared for highlighting the pragmatic aspect of discourse deficits in acquired language disorders, except for those designed for quantifying conversational samples. This study aimed to examine how pragmatic competence is impaired and reflected in spoken monologues in Chinese speakers with TBI. METHODS: Discourse samples of five tasks (personal narrative, storytelling, procedural, single- and sequential picture description) were elicited from ten TBI survivors and their controls. Each discourse sample was measured using 16 indices (e.g., number of informative words, percentage of local/global coherence errors, repeated words or phrases) that corresponded to the four Gricean maxims. Twenty-five naïve Chinese speakers were also recruited to perform perceptual rating of the quality of all 50 TBI audio files (five discourse samples per TBI participant), in terms of erroneous/inaccurate information, adequacy of amount of information given, as well as degree of organization and clarity. RESULTS: The maxim of quantity best predicted TBI's pragmatic impairments. Naïve listeners' perception of pragmatics deficits correlated to measures on total and informative words, as well as number and length of terminable units. Clinically, personal narrative and storytelling tasks could better elicit violations in pragmatics. CONCLUSION: Applying Gricean maxims in monologic oral narratives could capture the hallmark underlying pragmatic problems in TBI. This may help provide an additional approach of clinically assessing social communications in and subsequent management of TBI.

Measuring Orthographic Knowledge of L2 Chinese Learners in Vietnam Using a Handwriting Task - A Preliminary Report.

In the current study, the orthographic knowledge required for writing Chinese characters was assessed among participants with L1 Vietnamese background who learn Chinese as a foreign language. A total of 42 undergraduates were recruited. They were invited to participate in a delayed Chinese character copying task consisting of 32 characters. Their Chinese character reading abilities were also obtained using a character naming task. All the tests were conducted online during the pandemic in 2021. Results indicated that the participants' accuracy in the copying task was affected by the familiarity of the characters and the number of strokes of the characters. These effects minimized as reading performance increased. In the inter-stroke interval (ISI) analysis, results indicated a significant boundary effect where ISIs between orthographic units were longer than ISIs within orthographic units, showing the participants' tendency to chunk Chinese characters into functional units when they write. Only high achievers in the reading task demonstrated the use of both large and small grain-size units in writing (i.e., radical-boundary ISI > logographeme-boundary ISI > non-boundary ISI), while the low achievers only used small grain-size units in their writing. We suggest that the delayed copying task incorporated with handwriting measures is an effective method to assess orthographic knowledge of L2 Chinese learners.

Sentence types and complexity of spontaneous discourse productions by Cantonese-speakers with traumatic brain injury- a preliminary report.

Previous investigations on sentence production in English-speaking individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have yielded mixed conclusions based on their findings. While some studies found comparable sentence complexity between speakers with TBI and control speakers, others reported more syntactic and lexical errors, reduced sentence complexity, and erroneous word order transpositions in the sentence production of speakers with TBI. These contradictory findings could possibly be due to the use of language measures that were less sensitive to subtle syntactic impairments among speakers with TBI. In this preliminary report, the language samples obtained from 11 Cantonese-speaking participants with mild-moderate TBI in Guangzhou, with a mean age of 37.6 and mean years of education of 10 years, and nine control speakers with a similar age range and education background were analyzed using in-depth linguistic-oriented frameworks adopted from pervious works in Cantonese. The results indicated that the TBI group produced more errors, different varieties of sentence types, and lower syntactic complexity in their sentence production compared with the control group. The findings suggested that the more refined and linguistic-oriented measures used in the present study were more sensitive in identifying the subtle syntactic impairments produced by the participants with TBI.

Early Auditory Event-Related Potentials Are Modulated by Alphabetic Literacy Skills in Logographic Chinese Readers.

The acquisition of an alphabetic orthography transforms speech processing in the human brain. Behavioral evidence shows that phonological awareness as assessed by meta-phonological tasks like phoneme judgment, is enhanced by alphabetic literacy acquisition. The current study investigates the time-course of the neuro-cognitive operations underlying this enhancement as revealed by event-related potentials (ERPs). Chinese readers with and without proficiency in Jyutping, a Romanization system of Cantonese, were recruited for an auditory onset phoneme judgment task; their behavioral responses and the elicited ERPs were examined. Proficient readers of Jyutping achieved higher response accuracy and exhibited more negative-going ERPs in three early ERP time-windows corresponding to the P1, N1, and P2 components. The phonological mismatch negativity component exhibited sensitivity to both onset and rhyme mismatch in the speech stimuli, but it was not modulated by alphabetic literacy skills. The sustained negativity in the P1-N1-P2 time-windows is interpreted as reflecting enhanced phonetic/phonological processing or attentional/awareness modulation associated with alphabetic literacy and phonological awareness skills.

The Dual-route Account of Writing-to-Dictation in Chinese: A Short Report.

This is a short report of an experiment conducted to investigate the effects of phonology-to-orthography (P-O) consistency, lexical frequency, imageability, and the number of strokes on writing-to-dictation in Chinese. Thirty-two undergraduates were tested using a writing-to-dictation task consisting of 60 Chinese characters without homophones (i.e., P-O consistent) and 60 Chinese characters with at least two homophones (i.e., P-O inconsistent), the responses of which were recorded on an Android tablet. Linear mixed-effect modelling was used to investigate the significance of the different effects on three measures-accuracy, response time (RT), and total writing time. The results indicated that imageability was significant in predicting accuracy and RT; P-O consistency was significant in predicting RT and total writing time; the number of strokes was significant in predicting accuracy and total writing time; and the lexical frequency effect was significant in predicting all three measures. In general, the results supported the dual-route account of writing-to-dictation in Chinese and confirmed that both the lexical-semantic and lexical non-semantic pathways are needed to explain writing-to-dictation in Chinese. The significance of the different effects observed in the three measures also indicated the need to include different measures when studying writing-to-dictation to better understand the time course of the writing process.

Orthographic and Phonological Processing in Chinese Character Copying - A Preliminary Report.

In the current study, the effects of orthographic and phonological processing in Chinese character copying were investigated using a data set extracted from a database containing handwriting data of 856 stimuli; the responses of which were collected from 100 participants. To investigate the effect of character frequency, radical frequency, and phonetic regularity, 151 phonetic compounds were selected from the database because (1) their corresponding phonetic radicals were all free-standing characters, (2) their corresponding phonetic radicals were located at either the right or the bottom positions in the characters, and (3) no more than 10% of the participants made errors when copying these target characters. The results of the linear mixed effect models revealed that after controlling for inter-stroke distance (ISD) and stroke number, the inter-stroke intervals (ISIs) at the radical and logographeme boundaries were significantly longer, indicating significant orthographic processing in the immediate copying task that radicals and logographemes were used as writing units. In addition, shorter ISIs at the logographeme boundary associated with higher radical frequency, and shorter ISIs at the radical boundary associated with higher character frequency and regular characters, were observed. These observations indicated significant orthographic and phonological effects in the immediate copying task. Finally, the significant phonetic regularity effect observed also supported the notion that phonology contributes to Chinese character writing and that the effects of central processing, including character frequency and phonetic regularity, cascade over peripheral processing during Chinese character copying.

Analysing coherence of oral discourse among Cantonese speakers in Mainland China with traumatic brain injury and cerebrovascular accident.

Purpose: Coherence can reflect subtle language deficits in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and cerebrovascular accident (CVA). This study aimed at investigating whether global and local coherence in Cantonese-speaking adults with CVA and TBI differ from non-brain-injured (NBI) speakers. Factors contributing to the coherence ratings and impacts of elicitation tasks on coherence were examined.Method: Two clinical groups with fluent aphasia (7 CVA and 11 TBI) and 18 controls matched in age and education, who were Cantonese speakers living in China participated. Language samples of single and sequential picture description and storytelling were elicited, and subsequently analysed on global and local coherence, content sequence, and informativeness.Result: TBI speakers had impaired global and local coherence, while CVA speakers had poor global coherence. Sequence of main events produced by the three groups correlated significantly with global coherence. Attention and visuospatial skills were also significantly related to global coherence in both clinical groups. Finally, impaired language integrity was associated with problems of local coherence.Conclusion: The results were consistent with previous studies. Linguistic deficits of coherence in discourse in the two clinical groups and possible impacts of elicitation tasks on the cognitive demands and coherence ratings were discussed.

Validation of constituent logographemes and radicals in Chinese characters using handwriting data.

Studies have shown that logographemes and radicals, subcharacter units in Chinese characters, are represented in the orthographic lexicon and are functional processing units in the writing of Chinese characters. Nevertheless, there is no consensus regarding how characters should be segmented into logographemes and radicals. This article reports handwriting data for a list of 209 Chinese characters (95 nonphonetic compounds and 114 phonetic compounds) in a copying task. To validate the constituent logographemes and radicals of the target Chinese characters, comparisons among between-radical interstroke intervals (ISIs), between-logographeme ISIs, and within-logographeme ISIs, as well as their interactions with orthographic factors including character frequency, stroke number, and configuration, were conducted using factorial analyses. The results showed that the ISI comparison method is effective in validating the constituent logographemes and radicals in Chinese characters. On the basis of this list of 209 stimuli, another 1,227 Chinese characters that share the same set of radicals with the stimuli were further identified. Their constituent logographemes were deduced accordingly. Altogether, the over 1,000 Chinese characters with validated constituent logographemes will serve as a powerful reference for future psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research. Future potential applications are discussed.

Effectiveness of a multidisciplinary parent training program for children with developmental disabilities: A single-blind randomized waitlist controlled trial.

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary parent training program, Promoting Holistic Development of Young Kids (Poly Kids), using a single-blind randomized waitlist controlled design. The participants included 218 parents of children with developmental disabilities (DD) (intervention group = 107 and waitlist control group = 111). The primary outcomes were child learning, expressive language, fine and gross motor skills (based on individual assessment by respective blinded professionals), and parental reports of child behavior problems. The parents in the intervention group reported significantly lower child behavior problems (d = .34), higher child task motivation (d = .63), and lower parenting stress post-intervention (d = .25), while the children in the intervention group produced significantly more words post-intervention (d = .82). McNemar test results were significant for movement out of the clinical range in child behavior problems and cognitive skills in the intervention group, but not the control group. The results provided initial evidence on the effectiveness of this train-the-trainer program in supporting families with preschool children with DD in terms of child behavior problems, expressive language, cognitive skills, task motivation, and parenting stress.

Representations of grapho-motor patterns unique to Chinese character writing: evidence from a patient with mirror writing.

This study investigated the grapho-motor patterns used in writing Chinese characters. A Chinese patient, CSC, who demonstrated post-brain-injury mirror writing, was recruited. In Experiment 1, non-mirrored writing responses were obtained when CSC was instructed to copy asymmetrical non-verbal symbols and pictures. Resembling the patterns observed in a patient's writing reported in a previous study, it was hypothesized that CSC's mirror writing was a result of untransformed preserved grapho-motor patterns. In Experiments 2 and 3, CSC was further instructed to copy real Chinese characters, pseudo-characters with authentic radicals and logographemes (i.e., stroke clusters that frequently occur in radicals), and Hangul characters with stroke clusters resembling the shapes of authentic logographemes. The results showed that CSC demonstrated mirror writing only when authentic Chinese orthographic units were involved. Non-mirrored writing responses were obtained from stimuli without authentic Chinese orthographic units. In sum, CSC's performance supported the existence of grapho-motor patterns of Chinese orthographic units represented in the brain. Theoretical implications were discussed.

Grain size units of Chinese handwriting: development and disorder.

The current study investigated the grain size of writing units used by children in copying Chinese characters using handwriting measures. In Experiment 1, 31 Grade 1 and 31 Grade 5 children studying in mainstream schools in Hong Kong were invited to copy 36 pseudo-characters on an Android tablet. The pseudo-characters were constructed by combining, in their legal positions, radicals that contain two logographemes. The pseudo-characters contain only high frequency radicals in one condition and only low frequency radicals in the other condition. Linear mixed effect modeling was used to analyze the significance of radical frequency, radical free-standing frequency, and logographeme frequency in predicting the inter-stroke intervals after controlling for inter-stroke distance and gestalt boundaries of radicals and logographemes. The results showed that all three frequency measures significantly predicted Grade 5 children's inter-stroke intervals while only logographeme frequency and radical free-standing frequency significantly predicted Grade 1 children's inter-stroke intervals. This indicated that older children demonstrated the use of both small and large grain size units in writing Chinese characters while younger children showed tendency to use small grain size units with the support of some large grain size units that they know in writing Chinese characters. In Experiment 2, a Grade 3 child with writing difficulties was assessed using the same task. Results showed that he demonstrated the use of only small grain size units in writing. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.

Modified semantic feature analysis for anomia: a single case study.

Semantic feature analysis (SFA) is a treatment approach designed for patients with lexical retrieval difficulty caused by semantic deficits. During training, a structured framework (e.g. requiring the patient to name the category, function, and colour of the target items) is usually provided to facilitate the patient in thinking of the semantic features of the target items. Nevertheless, the use of a structured framework potentially limits the variety of semantic features activated for lexical retrieval. This study investigated the effectiveness of modified SFA training to address this potential limitation. An odd-man-out task was carried out in the modified SFA training with an anomic patient with impaired access to the phonological output lexicon. The task aimed to encourage a detailed comparison of semantic features among items in the same category. It is hypothesized that activations of more distinctive semantic features belonging to the target items will result in greater extent of generalizations in the lexical processing. The patient's abilities in naming semantic features at the beginning and at the end of each treatment session were compared. Besides, accuracy and error patterns in oral and written naming in the initial and post-treatment assessment were also compared. The results showed a significant increase in the number of semantic features retrieved within treatment sessions. Moreover, a significant improvement in oral picture naming was also observed subsequent to the modified SFA training. Finally, the results of the error analyses further supported that the modified SFA was effective in promoting overall lexical processing. The findings indicated that both quantity and distinctiveness of concepts activated in the semantic system are essential to effective lexical retrieval. Theoretical and clinical implications were also discussed.

A phonetic radical account of the phonology-to-Orthography consistency effect on writing Chinese characters: Evidence from a Chinese Dysgraphic patient.

This study investigated the sublexical route in writing Chinese characters. Using a writing-to-dictation task, we compared neurotypical participants' performance on writing a set of 40 characters with homophones sharing different phonetic radicals and another set of 40 characters with homophones sharing the same phonetic radicals. The first set of stimuli was regarded as both syllable-to-character and syllable-to-radical inconsistent, while the second set of stimuli was considered syllable-to-radical consistent but syllable-to-character inconsistent. The results of the error analysis showed that the control participants demonstrated a greater tendency to make errors with preserved phonetic radicals in the second set of stimuli. Furthermore, we conducted the same task with a Chinese brain-injured patient, WCY, who had mild dyslexia and severe dysgraphia associated with mild impairment to the lexical semantic route as shown by the patient's character writing. The results showed that WCY demonstrated similar error patterns as those of the control participants and a shorter writing time in the second set of stimuli. Altogether, the observations were taken as evidence that supported our claim that a syllable-to-phonetic radical route governs the sublexical route in Chinese character writing.

Relations between awareness of morphosyntactic structures in Chinese compound words and reading abilities: A short report.

This is a short report of the investigation of the relationship between awareness of morphosyntactic structures in Chinese compound words and reading abilities on 268 fourth graders studying in three mainstream schools in Shenzhen. All children were assessed using reading and cognitive tasks including rapid automatized naming, phonological, orthographic and morphological awareness. A compound production task using pseudo compound words with different morphosyntactic structures in the first and second levels as stimuli was also conducted. Results of ANOVA indicated that main effect of first level morphosyntactic structures, main effect of second level morphosyntactic structures and interaction effects between the two were significant. Children's awareness of different morphosyntactic structures were affected by frequency of usage of individual morphosyntactic structures in the language. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the awareness of morphosyntactic structures in Chinese compound words is strongly associated with Chinese reading abilities. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.

Electrophysiological evidence of sublexical phonological access in character processing by L2 Chinese learners of L1 alphabetic scripts.

While Chinese character reading relies more on addressed phonology relative to alphabetic scripts, skilled Chinese readers also access sublexical phonological units during recognition of phonograms. However, sublexical orthography-to-phonology mapping has not been found among beginning second language (L2) Chinese learners. This study investigated character reading in more advanced Chinese learners whose native writing system is alphabetic. Phonological regularity and consistency were examined in behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) in lexical decision and delayed naming tasks. Participants were 18 native English speakers who acquired written Chinese after age 5 years and reached grade 4 Chinese reading level. Behaviorally, regular characters were named more accurately than irregular characters, but consistency had no effect. Similar to native Chinese readers, regularity effects emerged early with regular characters eliciting a greater N170 than irregular characters. Regular characters also elicited greater frontal P200 and smaller N400 than irregular characters in phonograms of low consistency. Additionally, regular-consistent characters and irregular-inconsistent characters had more negative amplitudes than irregular-consistent characters in the N400 and LPC time windows. The overall pattern of brain activities revealed distinct regularity and consistency effects in both tasks. Although orthographic neighbors are activated in character processing of L2 Chinese readers, the timing of their impact seems delayed compared with native Chinese readers. The time courses of regularity and consistency effects across ERP components suggest both assimilation and accommodation of the reading network in learning to read a typologically distinct second orthographic system.

Predicting the naming of regular-, irregular- and non-phonetic compounds in Chinese.

This study investigated the contributions of different cognitive measures in predicting the three types of Chinese characters: regular phonetic compounds, irregular phonetic compounds and non-phonetic compounds. A total of 246 Grade 3 children (mean age = 8.63 yrs) were tested using a bunch of tasks including phonological processing, orthographic processing, morphological processing, rapid automatised naming and Chinese character naming. Results showed that advanced phonological processing skills contributed largely to regular phonetic compounds naming while other cognitive measures predict the naming of the other two types of characters. The results imply that the skills underlying the learning of regular phonetic compounds are different from that of irregular phonetic compounds and non-phonetic compounds, which are similar. Data from three poor readers whose performances pattern on naming different types of Chinese characters agreed with the pattern predicted by their performances in different cognitive tasks provide further support to the claim. Theoretical and pedagogical implications were discussed.