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Cross‐lagged panel analysis of reciprocal effects of morphological processing and reading in Chinese in a multilingual context
Author(s) -
Zhang Dongbo,
Koda Keiko,
Leong Che Kan,
Pang Elizabeth
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of research in reading
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.077
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9817
pISSN - 0141-0423
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9817.12135
Subject(s) - psychology , reading (process) , reading comprehension , reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , context (archaeology) , path analysis (statistics) , linguistics , reciprocal , comprehension , panel analysis , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , panel data , social psychology , communication , computer science , paleontology , philosophy , machine learning , biology , statistics , mathematics
Background While much is known about how morphological awareness (MA) contributes to reading development, little attention has been paid to how reading may conversely affect MA development, particularly in readers of Chinese in a bilingual/multilingual setting. Methods The study adopted a cross‐lagged panel design. Young bilingual readers of Chinese were measured in MA, word reading and reading comprehension – all in Chinese – twice from Grade 3 to Grade 4. Results Path analysis revealed that Grade 3 MA significantly predicted Grade 4 reading comprehension after controlling for the autoregressive effect. Over and above Grade 3 MA, Grade 3 reading also significantly predicted Grade 4 MA. Subsequent analyses, however, revealed disparate developmental patterns between those with Chinese and English, respectively, as their home language. Implications These findings, while supporting reciprocity of developmental relationships between MA and reading, also suggested that the pattern of relationships can vary as a function of students' target language experiences in a bilingual/multilingual setting.