中国科学院行为科学重点实验室知识库

Print awareness means the ability of recognizing word’s function and form and realizing the relationship between oral and written language. Previous studies found that during early emergent literacy stage, print awareness lays the foundation for preschoolers’ conventional literacy instruction. However, little is known about the development of Chinese preschoolers’ print awareness. Basing on previous studies, we measured 96 preschoolers’ print awareness through reading two picture books to them and asking them to answer several questions about print concept and word awareness. The results showed that the two aspects of print awareness showed different developmental trajectory in Chinese young children. The scores of print concept showed significant age effect, which indicated its rapid development in early age. However, only the score of word awareness in 5-year olds was significantly higher than that of 4-year olds, which suggested word awareness developed relatively late. Future research need to further explore the influence of children’s early reading experience, especially home literacy environment, on the different developmental characteristics of print concept and word awareness