Effects of Grade, Word Recognition Ability, and Frequency on Character in Inferiority in Children

• Main Authors: Yu-juan Zhang, 張宇鵑
• Other Authors: Shiouyuan Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/19351141339408167887

碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 兒童發展碩士學位學程 === 98 === The purpose of this research is to explore children’s word inferiority effect and investigate the impact of age and word recognition ability on word inferiority effect. The participants are 87 third graders and 93 fifth graders in Taipei. Third graders and fifth graders are divided into low, medium and high word recognition ability groups, respectively. Subjects are tested for radical detection task and asked to circle target radicals while reading. The target characters consist of 10 high-frequent and 10 low-frequent characters. The results are as follows: 1. Results reveal that word inferiority effect is shown on both third grader and fifth grader. Participants miss the target radical more often when it is embedded in high-frequent characters than in low-frequent characters. 2. Word inferiority effect between grade levels is statistically non-significant. 3. For third graders, word inferiority effect between medium-low degree and high-low degree word recognition ability groups reach significance. For fifth graders, medium and high degree word recognition ability groups show smaller detection errors in low-frequent characters than those who are in low-degree group. 4. When third-grade and fifth-grade students’ word recognition ability are both at the third graders’ level, the word inferiority effect for fifth graders are significantly larger than that for third graders. When third-grade and fifth-grade students’ word recognition ability are at the fifth graders’ level, word inferiority effect between grade levels in statistics is no difference. When children are reading, character frequency influences word recognition processes. In third graders, the result shows that as word recognition ability increases, the size of word inferiority effect increases. In fifth graders, children with higher word recognition ability show better distinction degree in Chinese radical low-frequent characters. When third-grade and fifth-grade students’ word recognition ability are at the third graders’ level, the word inferiority effect in fifth graders is larger than in third graders. This reveals that fifth graders’ word recognition ability is better than third graders. When third-grade and fifth-grade students’ word recognition ability are at the fifth graders’ level, grade levels fail to reach significance. This reveals that third graders and fifth graders’ word recognition ability are at the same degree. Keywords:children, word recognition, word inferiority effect, word recognition ability