Comparing the Phonological, Musical, and General Cognitive Profiles of Early-emerging Poor, Average, and Good Readers of Chinese

William Choi^1*Alfredo Bautista²Siu-hang Kong²Veronica Ka Wai Lai³

• ¹The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
• ²The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong, SAR China
• ³University of New Brunswick Saint John, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

This study compared the phonological, musical, and general cognitive profiles of early-emerging poor, average, and good readers. Specifically, we assessed Cantonese preschool children on Chinese word reading, phonological awareness, lexical tone awareness, musical rhythm perception, musical pitch perception, working memory, and non-verbal intelligence. Early-emerging poor readers exhibited poorer phonological awareness than early-emerging average and good readers, whereas the latter two groups did not differ significantly. In the working memory task, early-emerging good readers outperformed both early-emerging average and poor readers, who performed similarly. No significant group differences were found in lexical tone awareness, musical rhythm perception, musical pitch perception, or non-verbal intelligence. The results reflect phonological deficits in earlyemerging poor readers. Furthermore, phonological awareness and working memory were useful for identifying early-emerging poor and good readers, respectively. Clinically, these findings imply that early-emerging poor readers may benefit most from initial phonological awareness training, followed by working memory training. Moreover, working memory training may also be beneficial for earlyemerging average readers seeking to improve their Chinese word reading.