The Impact of Character Complexity on Chinese Literacy: A Generalized Additive Modeling Approach

Purpose We examined the effect of character complexity on early Chinese literacy (word reading and writing). We also investigated whether cognitive skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) could moderate the influence of character complexity on literacy outcomes.Method Our pre-registered study included a sample of 342 Cantonese – speaking Hong Kong Chinese children (162 males, 180 females, mean age = 7.32, SD = 0.87) from Grade 1 to Grade 3. We used a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) to estimate the main effect of complexity on word recognition and dictation as well as interaction effects with each of the three cognitive skills. Age and nonverbal IQ were also included as controls.Results Character complexity had a slightly curvilinear but consistently negative association with word reading, with odds ratios ranging from .62 to .71 per 10% increase in complexity. RAN and morphological awareness buffered the negative influence of character complexity. For writing to dictation, character complexity was more curvilinear, but character complexity and the interactions between cognitive skills and character complexity were not significant.Conclusion Complex visual input can be a barrier to early reading development in Chinese, and fostering morphological awareness may help mitigate this effect.