Visual perceptual abilities of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children

Mun Yee Lai, Frederick Leung

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper reports an investigation of Chinese-speaking and English- speaking children's general visual perceptual abilities. The Developmental Test of Visual Perception was administered to 41 native Chinese-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 4 mo. in Hong Kong and 35 English-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 2 mo. in Melbourne. Of interest were the two interrelated components of visual perceptual abilities, namely, motor-reduced visual perceptual and visual-motor integration perceptual abilities, which require either verbal or motoric responses in completing visual tasks. Chinese-speaking children significantly outperformed the English-speaking children on general visual perceptual abilities. When comparing the results of each of the two different components, the Chinese-speaking students' performance on visual-motor integration was far better than that of their counterparts (ES = 2.70), while the two groups of students performed similarly on motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities. Cultural factors such as written language format may be contributing to the enhanced performance of Chinese-speaking children's visual-motor integration abilities, but there may be validity questions in the Chinese version.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)433-445
    Number of pages13
    JournalPerceptual and Motor Skills
    Volume114
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2012

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