Psychological Development and Education ›› 2025, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (1): 68-76.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.01.08

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The Developmental Trajectories of Idiom Comprehension and Its Influential Factors in Chinese Middle-grade Primary School Children

XIE Ruibo1, FANG Yuanyuan1, WU Xinchun2,3, NGUYEN Thi Phuong4, ZHAO Ying5   

  1. 1. Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004;
    2. Research Center of Children's Reading and Learning, Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875;
    3. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai 519087;
    4. Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment for Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875;
    5. School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023
  • Published:2025-01-22

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Abstract: Chinese idiom is an important part of children’s language development, and exists widely in spoken and written language. In this study, 283 third-grade Chinese children were selected and followed up three times from grade 3 entering to grade 5 for two years. A latent variable growth model was used to explore the developmental trajectories of high semantic decomposition idiom, middle semantic decomposition idiom, and semantic indecomposable idiom, and the predictive effects of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading comprehension on the developmental trajectories of the three types of idioms. The results showed that: (1) All three types of idioms showed a linear development trend over time with significant individual differences in the initial level and development speed, and there were compensatory effects on the development of high semantic decomposition idiom and middle semantic decomposition idiom; (2) Phonological awareness and reading comprehension could positively predict the initial level of high semantic decomposition idiom, morphological awareness and reading comprehension could positively predict the initial level of middle semantic decomposition idiom, while the initial level of semantic indecomposable idiom was only significantly positively predicted by morphological awareness; (3) Reading comprehension was a positive predictor and morphological awareness was a negative predictor of the development speed of semantic indecomposable idiom. These results indicate that phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading comprehension play different roles in the development of three types of idioms, which enriches the recognition of Chinese idioms and has important implications for future idiom teaching.

Key words: idiom comprehension development, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, reading comprehension, middle-grade primary school children

CLC Number: 

  • G442
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