|
Reading study of the spelling verbs showed that the naming speed is highly cor related to the reading comprehension. This is because the cognitive process naming is similar to the low level of cognitive process of reading (Wolf, 199 1). On the other hand, working memory and reading process are related to each other because to comprehend the contents of an article, one have to keep the o rder of verb to verb, phase to phase,and sentence to sentence and store them into the working memory, and in the mean timto get the phonology and syntax fr om the cognition system in a short time (Siegel, 1994). The main purpose of th e study is to investigate the correlation among the naming speed, working memo ry and Chinese reading ability based on the performances of the second and fif th grade students. The study applied the correlation research method and utili zed the match-pair method in selecting subjects (that is each pair students ha ve the same or similar IQ, age, family economic/social level except one is rea ding disab child and the other is normal child). A total of 115 students, grad e 2 and grade 5, from the elementary schools of Kaohsiung city were invited in to the study. All students were administrated to the working memory span test (Zen, 1996) and Chinese reading ability test (Choi & Hun, 1996) accompanied wi th a computer program to collect each subject''s naming speed after treated by the diverse stimulation. Results of the study show that working memory is a st eady and significant effect in discriminating grade 2 d grade 5 students betwe en normal children and reading disable children. For the variable of naming sp eed, the sequential naming is more discriminative than the individual naming. For variables of category, based on six types of tests, color is the most disc riminative variable, followed by the phonetic symbol and numeral variables. T he language crossed naming test has discriminative effect in every numeral ite m for grade 5, but has discriminative effect for grade 2 only when numeral is 20. The non-languagerossed naming test does not have discriminative effect for grade 5, but has the discriminative effect for grade 2 except the 20 numeral item. Results also show that the discriminative effect tends to be steady when the numeral is 10. The correlation among the naming speed, working memory and Chinese ability are all statistical significance. The result of path analysis shows that the naming speed has direct influence in the Chinese ability and h as indirect influence in working memory. The findings support rearch assumpti ons. Finally, based on the experimental design, research instruments and resea rch variables, the researcher presents three suggestions for the future study.
|