Different visual skills are important in learning to read English and Chinese

Two longitudinal studies with 100 Chinese children attending kindergarten in Hong Kong and 52 English nursery children in Britain were conducted to investigate the visual precursors of learning to read Chinese and English. Pre-reading performance in shape constancy was found to be a significant predictor of later Chinese word reading with Chinese children (Study 1) whereas pre-reading performance in spatial relationships, position in space, and figure-ground were significant predictors of later English word reading with English children (Study 2), even after controlling for the effects of extraneous factors, such as age and IQ. Thus, different visual skills were important in learning to read Chinese and English. These findings are explained in terms of the different graphic features of the two orthographies and some educational implications are discussed.