The reciprocal relationship between vocabulary knowledge and word reading in Chinese primary-school children

There may be some mutual promotion between vocabulary knowledge and word reading because the development of either of these leads to a stronger bonding of orthographic, phonological, and semantic information. This study investigated the developmental relationship between vocabulary knowledge and word-reading ability in Chinese. We recruited 204 Mandarin-speaking primary school children in Beijing. Their vocabulary knowledge and word reading were measured from Grades one to three. Cross-lagged modeling analysis was used to investigate the potential bidirectional relationship between their vocabulary knowledge and word reading. Individual differences were found in vocabulary knowledge and word reading from Grades one to three. The children's vocabulary knowledge and word reading predicted each other reciprocally with the autoregressive effects controlled. This evidence provides an insight into the relationship between oral and written word representations in a deep orthography (i.e., Chinese), which is essential for the development of precise models of reading development.