A Study of Metrical Notes Durations Discrimination and Phonological Awareness for Children with Chinese Reading Difficulties

節拍音值長短辨識與聲韻覺識於中文閱讀障礙孩童之研究

An increasing number of studies verify the co-relation between musical rhythmic perception and reading ability/developmental dyslexia in children whose mother tongue is English. This study investigates whether this relationship exists in a non-alphabetic language, Chinese. Seventy-eight Chinese-speaking children with and without reading difficulties (RD) were recruited to participate in a musical meter perception task, in which the participants were asked to discriminate the musical meters based on the note durations. The results show that Chinese-speaking children with RD performed significantly poorer on this task compared to their counterparts without RD. Moreover, their performance on the perception of musical meter with various note durations is closely related to their awareness of rhyme in Chinese speech, nonetheless it is not directly related to their ability in recognizing Chinese characters. The research concludes that there is a correlation between musical rhythmic recognition and rhyme awareness in speech and the two may share an underlying processing mechanism.

越來越多證據顯示，以英語為母語的一般及閱讀障礙學童的音樂節奏知覺與閱讀能力有關。而多數研究以節拍音值長短辨識檢視學童音樂節奏感，本研究試圖檢視上述關聯是否也存在於中文這種非字母拼音的文字語言中。為此，本研究招募78位母語為中文的一般及閱讀困難學童進行一個節拍音值長短辨識作業；學童須根據音符時間的長短進行節拍音值長短辨識。研究結果顯示，以中文為母語的學童中，有閱讀困難的學童在音樂節拍判斷作業的表現較正常發展的學童差。此外，學童的節拍知覺與其本身對中文口語的聲韻節奏覺識有顯著關聯，然而，與中文識字能力無直接相關。基於這樣的關聯，本研究推論節拍音值長短辨識及聲韻覺識可能有共同的知覺處理機制。