Li-Chih Wang

This longitudinal study investigated cognitive-linguistic profiles of Hong Kong preschool children with a familial risk for dyslexia (FRD) and examined whether constructive spatial assembly contributed to later language and reading development. Among 204 children, 102 with FRD were matched to typically developing (TD) peers on age and gender. At age 4 (time 1), participating children completed assessments of constructive spatial assembly (measured by the Test of Spatial Assembly [TOSA]), executive functioning, rapid naming, and vocabulary knowledge; at age 5 (time 2), they were tested on verbal comprehension and word reading. Children with FRD performed significantly lower across constructive spatial assembly, executive functioning, vocabulary knowledge, verbal comprehension, and word reading. Constructive spatial assembly, a specific dimension of spatial skills, at time 1 significantly predicted verbal comprehension and word reading at time 2, whereas vocabulary knowledge additionally predicted verbal comprehension. These findings suggest that constructive spatial assembly may represent an additional cognitive resource relevant to early language and reading development and may be a useful target for multicomponent early intervention in children with FRD.

Specific Learning Disabilities (SpLD) refer to neurodevelopmental conditions that affect the acquisition and use of academic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics, despite adequate instr...

This study examined the impacts of an AI chatbot intervention for improving arithmetic word-problem-solving among Chinese primary students with dyslexia and explored how different types of motivation moderated these effects. Eighty-three students diagnosed with dyslexia were recruited and randomly assigned to either an AI chatbot-assisted learning condition or a traditional instruction control group. Over 6 weeks, the experimental AI chatbot group received adaptive, multisensory, and individually tailored support for arithmetic word problems. Results revealed that the Chatbot group witnessed significantly greater gains in arithmetic word-problem-solving performance than the control group. Moderation analyses showed that intrinsic motivation, but not extrinsic motivation or amotivation, significantly enhanced the intervention’s impacts. Intrinsic motivation emerged as the key factor that amplifies the impact of the intervention. The experimental group exhibited substantial increases in intrinsic motivation and reductions in amotivation, whereas the control group’s motivation remained unchanged. These findings indicate the importance of intrinsic motivation in maximizing the educational impact of AI-based interventions to support students with dyslexia.

Specific learning difficulties (SpLD), ADHD, and ASD are the most common neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) found in mainstream schools. In addition to fo

Background: This quasi‐experimental study tested whether prosodic sensitivity serves as a mediator through which an 8‐week repeated reading intervention improves Chinese oral reading fluency. Methods: Seventy‐nine typically developing Chinese Grades 4–6 students, including 39 in the experimental group and 40 in the control group, were recruited from north Taiwan and completed pretests and posttests of prosodic sensitivity, Chinese character reading and oral reading fluency before and after the intervention. Results: Our results of 2 (group) × 2 (time) two‐way ANCOVAs indicated that significant interactions of prosodic sensitivity, Chinese character reading and oral reading fluency, and the simple main effects showed that repeated reading interventions could significantly improve all three reading skills. Additionally, parallel and sequential mediation models, estimated with 5000 bootstraps, examined two possible causal chains of the experimental group: decoding‐first (time → Chinese character reading difference → prosodic sensitivity difference → oral reading fluency difference) and prosody‐first (time → prosodic sensitivity difference → Chinese character reading difference → oral reading fluency difference). Because the pretest–posttest difference of the control group is not significant for any of the three reading skills, such mediation analyses were applied to the experimental group only. Results of this section showed that the prosody‐first chain produced a coherent, positive indirect effect, whereas the decoding‐first chain was insignificant. Total variance explained in oral reading fluency gains was comparable across models, but path coherence favored the prosody‐first ordering. Conclusions: These findings suggest that repeated reading may accelerate Chinese oral reading fluency partly by first strengthening prosodic sensitivity, which then facilitates more accurate and efficient character decoding.

This study investigated Theory of Mind (ToM) in Chinese children with and without dyslexia and examined the moderating effect of early picture book reading experience on the relationship between ToM and reading comprehension. Grounded in the Landscape Model of Reading, we compared ToM between groups and explored how early literacy experiences influence reading comprehension. In total, 86 Chinese children, including 44 with dyslexia and 42 typically developing, were recruited for this study. Results revealed that typically developing children outperformed those with dyslexia in ToM tasks (η²_p = 0.86). Early picture book reading experience significantly moderated the relationship between ToM and reading comprehension for children with dyslexia (β = 0.03, p < 0.05), but not for typically developing children. Notably, the moderating effect of picture book reading was significant only for children with dyslexia who had richer early literacy experiences. On the contrary, this moderation effect was not observed in typically developing children. The study contributes to our understanding of the universal and language‐specific factors influencing reading development and suggests targeted interventions for children with dyslexia in Chinese‐speaking populations.

This study aimed to compare trait anxiety and test anxiety among Chinese undergraduates with typical development, high-functioning specific learning disabilities (SLD), and typical-functioning SLD, and to examine the mediating role of test anxiety in the relationship between trait anxiety and academic performance across these three groups. The study included 239 s-year undergraduate students from universities in Taiwan, with 134 typically developing students, 54 students with typical-functioning SLD, and 51 students with high-functioning SLD. Our results indicated that the high-functioning SLD group reported significantly lower levels of trait anxiety and test anxiety compared to both the typically developing and typical-functioning SLD groups. The typical-functioning SLD group exhibited the highest levels of test anxiety. Mediation analyses revealed that test anxiety significantly mediated the relationship between trait anxiety and academic performance in the high-functioning SLD group, while only a direct effect of trait anxiety on academic performance was found in the typical-functioning SLD group. No significant direct or indirect effects were found in the typically developing group. Our findings highlight distinct anxiety profiles and differential patterns of direct and indirect effects of trait anxiety on academic performance among Chinese undergraduates with high-functioning SLD, typical-functioning SLD, and typical development.

This study investigates facial recognition and the role of theory of mind in Chinese children with dyslexia, addressing a significant gap in research on nonalphabetic dyslexia. Participants were 174 children (85 with dyslexia, 89 typically developing) in Grades 4–6 in Taiwan. Facial recognition, theory of mind, and visual perception were assessed using standardized tests and a researcher-made task. Results revealed that children with dyslexia performed significantly worse on facial recognition tasks than their typically developing peers, even when controlling for visual perception. Furthermore, visual perception emerged as a strong predictor of facial recognition in both groups. Theory of mind also associated significantly with facial recognition, but only for the dyslexia group. These findings underscore the importance of the role social-cognitive skills play in visual perception for this population. The findings suggest that interventions for Chinese children with dyslexia should address both visual and social-cognitive skills to improve facial recognition and social interactions.