Research on Pictographs Promoting Young Children's Memory for Chinese Character Forms Under Implicit Learning
Using a task-dissociation paradigm with 100 Xuzhou kindergartners (ages 4-5), this study tested whether Dongba pictographs or oracle-bone characters better help children remember Chinese character forms under implicit learning. In Experiment 1 (explicit recognition), children who studied color-matched character pairs via oracle-bone script recognized target Chinese characters significantly better than those who studied Dongba-paired characters, both immediately and after a five-day delay; pictographic (versus phono-semantic) characters showed a short-term but not long-term recognition advantage. In Experiment 2 (implicit preference judgment), the Dongba and oracle-bone groups did not differ, though pictographic characters retained an advantage over phono-semantic ones at delay. The authors attribute oracle-bone script's edge to its closer structural resemblance to modern Chinese characters, and conclude that both scripts, especially oracle-bone script, are useful pedagogical aids for early literacy.
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