The contribution of visual attention span and rapid automatized naming to reading fluency in Chinese

Abstract

Purpose: Several studies have shown that visual attention span (VAS) is a significant predictor of reading (e.g., Bosse & Valdois, 2009; Prado, Dubois, & Valdois, 2007; van den Boer & de Jong, 2018; Zoubrinetzky, Collet, Serniclaes, Nguyen-Morel, & Valdois, 2016). However, previous studies have measured VAS either with verbal (global report and partial report) or nonverbal (visual 1-back) tasks and they were conducted in alphabetic languages. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the role of verbal and nonverbal VAS tasks in reading fluency in Chinese. Methods The participants were 100 Cantonese-speaking university students in Hong Kong. Each participant was administered four VAS tasks (i.e., global report, partial report, visual 1-back with Chinese characters and visual 1-back with nonverbal stimuli), two Chinese reading fluency tasks (i.e., word fluency and text fluency), and two rapid automatized naming tasks (i.e., digit and letter). Results Results of regression analyses showed that VAS global report was a significant predictor of both word- and text-reading fluency. In addition, rapid automatized naming fully mediated the effects of VAS global report on reading fluency. Conclusions These findings suggest that VAS is important also in Chinese reading. However, not all aspects of VAS predict Chinese reading and the effects of VAS global report may be mediated by RAN.