學前聲韻處理、快速唸名與視覺記憶能力預測小一學童識字困難效能之檢測

The Accuracy of Predicting Grade-1 Character Reading Difficulties of 5-year-old Kindergarteners Using Phonological Processing, RAN, and Visual Memory

本研究是一個追蹤研究，探討幼兒大班時四類認知技能，即聲韻處理（包括聲韻覺識與聲韻解碼）、快速自動唸名、視覺記憶對一年級下學期識字困難的預測效果。研究者從兒童幼稚園大班下學期開始（4-6 月），為330 名學前幼兒進行相關認知技能的測量，當同一批兒童國小一年級上學期開始（9 月）及下學期結束時（6 月），再以標準化測驗測量其識字量，扣除流失人數後，第二年總人數為269人，研究者針對識字困難的37 人（Z 分數低於-1 者）及識字正常的50 人（Z 分數介於0 至0.5 者），共87 人進行區辨分析。結果顯示，識字困難學前顯著預測變項為聲韻解碼、快速自動唸名（Rapid Automatized Naming, RAN）、以及視覺記憶，總正確性為79.3%。在增進識字困難者的預測效能並降低假陰性方面，其重要性由高而低依次為RAN、視覺記憶、以及聲韻解碼。若輔以一上識字（9 月），則可使識字困難者預測正確率增加至100%。最後根據本研究結果，在未來預測指標的驗證與應用上提出建議。

Purpose: Early reading-related cognitive skills and abilities are proven to be crucial for later reading development. In addition, children's reading abilities can be improved more efficiently if they are diagnosed and addressed earlier. Thus, this study analyzes the effect of predicting which children are likely to experience character reading difficulties during kindergarten to first grade using several reading-related cognitive skills.
Methods: The cognitive skills assessed were phonological awareness, phonological decoding by the Tzu-Yin system, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual memory. During the last semester of kindergarten, from April 2009 to June 2009, the reading-related cognitive skills of 330 children were assessed. The same cohort of participants was followed through first grade, although only 269 remained. The character reading ability of these children was assessed from September 2009 to June 2010. Discriminant function analysis was employed to identify the best kindergarten performance predictors. We analyzed the data of 87 participants, including 37 children who experienced difficulty reading characters (their Z score for grade 1 character reading was below -1) and 50 children from the control group (their Z score ranged between 0 and 0.5).
Results: The results revealed that the significant performance predictors for first graders who experienced difficulty reading characters were phonological decoding, RAN, and visual memory. The total correction rate was 79.3%. Approximately 70.3% of the children who experienced difficulty recognizing characters at the end of first grade had been identified when they were 5 years old as being likely to experience difficulties. Among the predictors, RAN was the most significant variable for predicting which children would experience difficulties reading characters, followed by visual memory and phonological decoding. Nevertheless, 29.7% of the participants predicted to be poor character-readers exceeded expectations (false negative). Additionally, 14% of the children were incorrectly predicted to be unlikely to experience difficulty reading characters (false positive). When associating with the children's character reading performance in September, the accuracy of the prediction rate reached 100%. Additionally, the false negative rate was 0, and the false positive rate gradually declined from 14% to 6%.
Conclusions/Implications: This study longitudinally predicted which children were likely to experience difficulties with character recognition by observing the phonological processing, RAN, and visual memory performance of 5-year-old kindergarten students. The main contribution of this study is the development of criteria for identifying children who are likely to experience difficulty developing character recognition abilities during the initial stages of learning to read. The most useful early predictors are the cognitive skills of RAN, visual memory, and phonological decoding, in association with initial character recognition. In this study, children's phonological decoding skills were assessed using the Tzu-Yin system, which is widely employed to connect sounds with words for young children in Taiwan. Thus, the decoding performances may differ when assessing the phonological decoding skills of children who have never used the Tzu-Yin system previously.