中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

Pinyin knowledge has positive effect on Chinese young children learning to read. Also, many parents and educators often choose books which contain Pinyin on the top of Chinese character for supporting young children to read characters. However, little empirical evidence has been found that Pinyin on the top of Chinese character can support young children to read characters. The present study aims to examine whether Pinyin on the top of Chinese character can promote preschoolers’ reading. 33 Chinese preschoolers participated in the study. The eye movement when they looked at two types of stimuli “characters with Pinyin on the top” and “characters without Pinyin” were recorded by using of Eyelink system . Children’s Pinyin knowledge and character knowledge were measured as well. The results showed that the number of fixations on “characters with Pinyin” was significantly higher than that of “characters without Pinyin”, which indicated that characters with Pinyin on the top could attract children’s more fixations. However, further analyses found no significant difference between the number of fixations on familiar and unfamiliar characters with Pinyin. Children’s Pinyin knowledge positively correlated to their fixations on unfamiliar characters with Pinyin. Whereas, children’s character knowledge negatively correlated to their fixations on familiar characters with Pinyin. These results suggested that the effects of Pinyin on character reading may modulated by children’s character knowledge and Pinyin knowledge.