| Author: | Yu, Jiayu |
| Title: | Word learning in Mandarin-speaking children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder : the role of semantic head |
| Advisors: | Sheng, Li (CBS) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Subject: | Word recognition Chinese language -- Vocabulary Autistic children -- Language Children -- Language Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies |
| Pages: | xi, 123 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Characteristics of to-be-learned words are influencing factors in word learning but have been understudies in Mandarin-speaking children, especially in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Capitalizing on the properties of Mandarin, a language in which 65% of the vocabulary consists of compound words, the current study focuses on the role of semantic head, which provides learners with information about the semantic category of the word. For example, the right morpheme "花/hua2/(flower)" specifies the semantic category of the compound word "桃 花 /tao1 hua2/ (peach flower)". By using multiple tasks across several time points, the current thesis includes two studies that examined the effect of semantic head in word learning among Mandarin-speaking children with and without ASD. Furthermore, the predictive role of phonological memory and compound awareness has been examined. By ameliorating methodological gaps observed in previous research, Study 1 shows that the facilitative role of semantic head was observed in encoding phonological representations for Mandarin-speaking typically developing children, while its effect was absent at the retention stage. The salience of semantic head was further highlighted by the naming errors, as although children showed difficulty in retrieving the complete phonological representations of the newly taught words, they could produce the semantic heads of these words. Phonological memory and compound awareness predicted children's encoding performance. The role of compound awareness was more salient in predicting children's learning of words with semantic head, whereas phonological memory and compound awareness were equally important in predicting children's learning of words without semantic head. Moreover, instead of overnight improvement, children showed the evidence of forgetting in the naming task after a one-day delay, which may relate to preschoolers' sleep patterns. These findings support the necessity of taking word characteristics and learners' abilities into consideration when constructing a theoretical model that accounts for word learning for children aged over three years. Study 2 focuses on Mandarin-speaking children with ASD. Many children with ASD have smaller vocabularies than their TD peers, while they do not exhibit significant deficits in many aspects of word learning in laboratory studies of word learning. Study 2 shows that children with ASD can establish form-referent links and form phonological representations at the encoding stage. However, they showed differences in retaining the phonological representations over a one-week delay. Sleep quality was related to the changes in retention performance one-day and one-week after training only in children with ASD. Moreover, children with ASD also showed extraordinary difficulties in the definition task at both encoding and retention stages. The effect of semantic head was not observed in verbal children with ASD at either the encoding or retention stage, a possible consequence of their deficits in lexical-semantic processing and procedural learning. Phonological memory and compound awareness explained group differences in selecting correct word forms and predicted the encoding performance of children with ASD, with phonological memory being more critical in encoding new words. These key findings yielded several clinical implications that may inform the study of vocabulary interventions for Mandarin-speaking children with ASD. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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