How do children with developmental dyslexia in Chinese integrate sentence–picture information?
摘要
This study used a 3-factor mixed experimental design featuring a 2 (subject group: developmental dyslexia (DD) group, typically developing (TD) group) × 3 (sentence style: affirmative, negative, double negative) × 2 (picture information complexity: simple, complex) design to investigate the sentence–picture integration ability exhibited by children with DD in Chinese. In this context, participant type was the intersubject variable, and sentence type and picture complexity were the intrasubject variables. The findings of this research reveal the following: (1) children with DD in Chinese exhibit inferior performance on sentence–picture integration tasks in comparison with TD children; (2) the type of sentence has a significant effect on the sentence–picture integration process, such that children in both groups exhibit better performance with respect to affirmative sentences than with regard to negative sentences and better performance with respect to negative sentences than with regard to double negative sentences; and (3) the complexity of picture information significantly affects the sentence–picture integration process, such that children in both groups exhibit better integration performance under simple conditions than under complex conditions. On the basis of these findings, this study concludes that children with DD in Chinese possess weaker sentence–picture integration abilities than do TD children and that the greater the complexity of the sentence structure at hand is, the greater the demands on children's sentence–picture integration abilities become.