| Characters serve as a medium for information transmission,facilitating children’s rapid and extensive acquisition of information.Such acquisition is crucial for children’s language and reading development.Studies have shown that children’s acquisition of characters is not solely reliant on mechanical memory,but rather may be the result of print awareness development.Nevertheless,existing studies on the developmental characteristics and relationship between print awareness and character acquisition have not yet achieved a consensus.A total of 142 children from the second and third years of kindergarten(K2,K3)were assessed four times in two years with 6-month intervals.The classic dictionary judgment task was used to measure the children’s print awareness,including their awareness of print form and print rule.In addition,the study evaluated the children’s character acquisition using the PPCLS-B and PPCLS-C subtests of the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale(PPCLS).Descriptive statistics and repeated measures variance analysis were used to examine the developmental characteristics of children’s print awareness and character acquisition.Furthermore,cross-lagged models and longitudinal mediation models were employed to explore the relationship between print awareness and character acquisition.Results showed that:(a)children’s print awareness and character acquisition level increased significantly over time;(b)fitting the awareness of print form and print rule into a latent variable of print awareness and constructing a cross-lagged model between print awareness and character acquisition,this model showed no significant crosslagged relationship;(c)after controlling for autocorrelation effects,the print form awareness at T1 and T2 could promote character acquisition at T2 and T4,and the character acquisition at T1 and T2 could promote the development of print rule awareness at T2 and T4 in two cross-lagged models between print form awareness and character acquisition,and between print rule awareness and character acquisition;(d)the awareness of print form at T1 made significant indirect contributions to the awareness of print rule at T4 via character acquisition at T2 in addition to a significant direct contribution after controlling the auto-regressive effect of the print awareness and character acquisition among Chinese children.Based on these findings,the following conclusions were drawn:(a)children’s print form awareness and print rule awareness are two different components of print awareness;(b)the development of print form awareness is a prerequisite for children’s character acquisition,and character acquisition can further promote the development of children’s print rule awareness;(c)the development of children’s print form awareness can promote the development of their print rule awareness through character acquisition,which is consistent with the top-down cognitive processing theory.The following recommendations are proposed: In terms of ideas,kindergarten teachers should recognize that children can acquire characters;children’s character acquisition is the result of the development of print awareness;character acquisition can further promote the development of print awareness.In practice,kindergarten teachers should not be afraid of children acquiring characters;and should promote children’s character acquisition through print awareness education;when children acquire characters and interact with characters,teachers should guide children to pay attention to the print awareness. |
