The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Children: Testing of Cross-grade Paths

The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Children: Testing of Cross-grade Paths | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Children: Testing of Cross-grade Paths Chenjing Li, Haomin Zhang This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8620769/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 12 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension among native Chinese children. The participants consisted of 325 Chinese-speaking students in Grades 2, 4, and 6 from an elementary school in Henan Province, mainland China. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred models for different grade levels, demonstrating the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. The results indicated that only compound awareness directly contributed to reading comprehension in Grade 2. The indirect contribution of compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness was mediated by vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. More importantly, this study highlighted the key role of lexical inference in linking morphological awareness to reading comprehension in Chinese children. Humanities/Language and linguistics Social science/Language and linguistics Biological sciences/Psychology Social science/Psychology morphological awareness reading comprehension mediation vocabulary knowledge character recognition lexical inference Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Introduction The ability to read and comprehend what they read is an essential skill for children to acquire and develop during their primary school years. A growing body of research has found that morphological awareness (MA) uniquely contributes to reading comprehension across languages concurrently and longitudinally beyond substantive control measures ( e.g. Cheng et al., 2016 ; Ku & Anderson, 2003 ; Xie et al., 2019 ). MA is a metalinguistic skill involving the ability to reflect on and manipulate the morphemic structure of words (Carlisle, 1995 ), which should be understood at both the morpheme and morphological structure levels (Zhao et al., 2019 ). Different from alphabetic languages, Chinese is a logographic writing system, in which basic written symbols and morphemes exhibit morphologically transparent one-to-one correspondence (Cheng et al., 2016 ). MA is particularly important for Chinese children given its distinct orthographic and linguistic features exhibiting the separation of phonological and morphological information and the maintains of morphemes’ orthographic representation in different characters (Kim et al., 2020 ). Being aware of features of these words, children can reflect on and manipulate homophonic and homographic morphemes and the morphological compound structure of words (Carlisle, 1995 ; Kuo & Anderson, 2006 ; Xie et al., 2019 ). Related studies have highlighted the facilitative role of all three types of Chinese MA (compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness) in reading comprehension among primary-aged Chinese children (e.g. Pang & Son, 2024 ; Xie et al., 2019 ). Despite a strong correlation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese, most previous research examined this relationship in one or two primary grades and few studies tapped the contribution of all three distinct subcomponents of Chinese MA to reading comprehension in young Chinese students. The current study extends the previous research by investigating three facets of Chinese morphological awareness (compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness) and their relationship with reading comprehension among Chinese-speaking children across grades 2, 4, and 6. Previous research indicates that morphological awareness becomes increasingly important in reading development with grades (Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ; Cheng et al., 2017 ). Focusing on children of early, middle, and upper primary levels allows us to better understand how MA functions in contributing to reading ability at different elementary stages. More critically, our research was inspired by the reading systems framework (Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhil, 2005), which provides a theoretical overview on the role of morphology. This framework posits morphology as a valuable source of knowledge that contributes to morphological awareness and thus facilitates reading comprehension both directly and indirectly (Levesque, Kieffer, & Deacon, 2019 ), as well as the direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER; Kim, 2017 ), which specifies the precise mechanisms and pathways through which morphological awareness influences reading comprehension. Notably, Chinese MA facets may differentially influence reading comprehension. Understanding how these predictors interact and whether their roles are consistent among children across primary levels remains a critical issue. To give an overview, the current research employed cross-sectional design to test possible direct and indirect relations between Chinese MA facets and reading comprehension across early-middle-upper primary grades, after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. Contributions of Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language, morphological awareness refers to one’s ability to identify, analyze, and manipulate morphemes and word formation rules (Kuo & Anderson, 2006 ). Due to the productivity of compound words and the prevalence of homophonic and homographic morphemes in Chinese, compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness are three important indicators that are conceptualized in the comprehensive model of Chinese MA (Cheng et al., 2016 ). This conceptualization captures the typical characteristics of Chinese language at both morpheme level and word level (Xie et al., 2019 ). Comparing with morphophonemic language, Chinese MA has been shown to play a significant role in reading comprehension (Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ; Cheng et al., 2016 ). Morphological awareness greatly contributes to different levels of Chinese reading skills development and more critically these skills are essential for advanced-level meaning-based processing, such as text comprehension (Pan et al., 2016 ). Furthermore, different pathways through which Chinese MA facets contribute to reading development have been discussed in previous research involving native Chinese-speaking children in elementary schools. Compound awareness is the most fundamental facet of Chinese MA, referring to the capacity to analyze the combination of morphemes and the resultant formation of vocabulary (Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ). More than 70% words in Chinese are compounds, and the morphemes are relatively free in forming two- or more-character compound words (Cheng et al., 2016 ; Xia et al., 2024 ). Being aware of predominant compounds in Chinese morphology, children may effectively understand and manipulate morphological compounding structure rules and thus enhance their reading comprehension (Cheng et al., 2016 ; Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ; Xia et al., 2024 ). A growing number of studies on Chinese reading skills highlighted the importance of MA, especially compound awareness, in relatively young primary-aged children. Zhang ( 2016a ) investigated the concurrent and longitudinal effects of Chinese-specific MA (compound awareness) on the development of reading comprehension among Chinese children in Grade 2. The findings indicated that MA had a notable impact on reading comprehension and suggested the significant mediation of lexical inference ability. Similarly, the study of Kim et al. ( 2020 ) provided more insights into the close relationship of compound awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese second-graders. The results reported that compound awareness was directly related to reading comprehension, as well as indirectly through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, word reading, and listening comprehension. With a sample of Chinese children from grade 1 to 2, the results of Cheng et al.’s ( 2017 ) longitudinal study suggested that initial status and growth rates of compound awareness significantly contribute to reading comprehension at the end of second grade and word-reading efficiency fully mediates that relationship. A different result is from the longitudinal study of Xie et al. ( 2019 ), which examined the developmental relationships between three facets of Chinese MA and reading comprehension in Chinse children from Grades 1, 3, and 5. The result suggests a significant direct contribution of compound awareness to reading comprehension only from Grade 5 to 6. Take together, these studies provide evidence for multiple ways that compound awareness makes a contribution to reading comprehension in Chinese. Although the predictive role of compound awareness has been found in both lower and upper grades, inconsistent findings across studies, particularly regarding the middle grades, indicate a need for further investigation. Homophone awareness refers to the ability to comprehend that morphemes of identical pronunciation may have different meanings (Li et al., 2002 ). In Mandarin Chinese, the average number of homophones per syllable exceeds five (Li et al., 2002 ). Moreover, the abundance of homophones in Chinese imposes considerable challenges for children to identify specific morphemes especially in the absence of knowledge regarding the written representations (Liu et al., 2013 ). This is because Chinese homophones share identical pronunciation, but exhibit marked differences in morphology, orthography, and meaning (Pang & Son, 2024 ). With homophone awareness children can distinguish homophonic characters which share identical syllable (e.g., /yuan2/) but represent different morphemes (e.g., 元“money”, 员“person”, 园“garden”, 圆“circle”) (Xie et al., 2019 ). Some researchers investigated the relation between homophone awareness and reading comprehension. In Xie et al.’s ( 2019 ) longitudinal study with a sample of Chinese children from grades 1, 3, and 5, failed to detect a predictive contribution of homophone awareness to later reading comprehension across grades, after controlling for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, IQ, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness. In contrast to the results of Xie et al. ( 2019 ), a group of Chinese second graders with reading difficulties were assessed and the results suggested that homophone awareness together with compound awareness and homograph awareness made a direct and independent contribution to reading comprehension after accounting for phonological awareness and RAN; this relationship was partially mediated by vocabulary knowledge and character recognition (Pang & Son, 2024 ). Despite the increasing research on the relationship between homophone awareness and reading comprehension, there were inconsistent results across the aforementioned studies, which involved different groups of Chinese students and control variables. Apart from homophone awareness, homograph awareness is another facet of Chinese MA at the morpheme level, which refers to the capacity to discern the different meanings of a single written character within given words (Xie et al., 2019 ). The substantial number of Chinese words is homographic, representing two or more morphemes. This implies that children benefit from learning homographs for vocabulary development and reading comprehension, as they can recognize and distinguish that a familiar character may bear varied meanings within different vocabularies in text (e.g., 信/xin4/ in书信/shu1xin4/ means “letter”, but in 诚信/cheng2xin4/ means “honesty”) (Pang & Son, 2024 ). To put it differently, the development of homograph awareness can help children enrich vocabulary knowledge and improve lexical comprehension through processing homographic characters’ meanings in different words (Cheng et al., 2016 ; Chen, Yao, & Zhang, 2025 ). With the exception of the studies as follows, a limited number of studies have probed the relation between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese children and the findings regarding that relation is mixed. Pang and Son’s ( 2024 ) study of Grade 2 Chinese children with reading difficulties found a direct contribution of homograph awareness to reading comprehension and this relationship also mediated by vocabulary knowledge and character recognition. Conversely, Xie et al. ( 2019 ) reported no unique association between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in young Chinese children across primary school years. While these findings provide some evidence to the relationship between homograph awareness and reading comprehension, more comprehensive research is needed to ascertain whether homograph awareness plays a role in reading comprehension. Indirect pathways between Chinese morphological awareness facets and reading comprehension The indirect pathways of the relation of Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension have been investigated in previous studies, which found that morphological awareness was related to reading comprehension via the route of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference ability with different groups of Chinese students. As mentioned earlier, DIER specifies multiple plausible indirect pathways by which morphological awareness is connected with reading comprehension, as the contribution of component skills to reading comprehension is not always uniformly direct (Kim, 2017 ). Morphological awareness is a key resource for the development of vocabulary knowledge and plays a powerful role in facilitating learners’ vocabulary acquisition (Xia et al., 2022 ). With well-developed homophone awareness, children positively recognize homophonic morphemes (characters) in diversified word forms and differentiate meanings of identical syllables. With highly developed homograph awareness, children are easier to fixate on the multiple meanings of the same characters in different words. Moreover, children with proficient compound awareness can efficiently analyze compound structure of words and make reasonable inferences about the meanings of constituent morphemes. As a linguistic variable, vocabulary knowledge, including vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth, has been shown to have a strong association with reading comprehension in previous studies with Chinese students during their elementary school years (Teng & Cui, 2025 ; Wang & Zhang, 2025 ). A 4-year longitudinal study in third-grade Chinese children of Wang et al. ( 2022 ) found a significant predictive effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in grade 4 and bidirectional predictive relationships between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in grades 3 to 4 and grades 4 to 6. Moreover, Pang and Son ( 2024 ) discovered vocabulary knowledge mediate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese second graders. These studies suggest an indirect morphological pathway to reading with mediation of vocabulary knowledge across Chinese primary grades. Following this line of inquiry, character recognition has been proposed as an additional potential mediator to disentangle the mediating mechanism linking Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension. Different with lexical compounding structure at the word level, awareness of Chinese character operates the internal structure at the character level (Li et al., 2012 ). In semantically transparent Chinese, character is viewed as the basic graphic unit which typically comprises a phonetic radical and a semantic radical (Hoosain, 1991 ) and is recognized by analyzing the internal structure (Shu & Anderson, 1997 ). Specifically, “characters in Chinese text have clear boundaries and convey meanings” (Pan et al., 2021 , p. 3). Therefore, young Chinese children may place considerable reliance on character recognition at the early stage of learning to read sentences or discourse, especially when they lack reading experience (Pan et al., 2021 ). As a type of word-level reading skill, character recognition is substantially influenced by linguistic context. Therefore, character recognition has been used as a measure to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in empirical studies. Regarding mediation, Zhao et al. ( 2019 ) examined multiple mediation models of how morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension among Chinese children from grades 1 to 3. Their findings suggested that morphological awareness notably predicted reading comprehension via character recognition and reading fluency longitudinally. In addition, Pang and Son ( 2024 ) found a significant partial mediation effect of character recognition on the relationship between Chinese MA and reading comprehension among second-grade students with reading difficulties in Chinese mainland. Lexical inference ability refers to the capacity to make “informed guesses as to the meaning of a word in the light of all available linguistic cues in combination with the learner’s general knowledge of the world, her awareness of the co-text and her relevant linguistic knowledge” (Haastrup, 1991 , p. 40). Students can successfully derive meanings of unknown words by jointly drawing upon available linguistic cues (morphological information) and contextual cues (semantic information) (Zhang et al., 2022b ), as well as prior knowledge of world (Haastrup, 1991 ). Consequently, successful lexical inference by young children partially depends on word-internal knowledge and word-external information in text (Zhang, 2015 ). Given the role of lexical inference in establishing the linkage between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, Zhang ( 2015 ) tested the contribution of morphological awareness to literacy acquisition among Chinese students in Grade 2 and found that this contribution was fully mediated by vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference. In the same vein, Zhang ( 2016b ) further verified the mediating effect of lexical inference in the indirect path between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese primary students. Notably, prior studies confirmed the important roles of both vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference in close connection between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Theoretically speaking, vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference are two intertwined constructs in facilitating word acquisition (Zhang & Pei, 2022 ). Influenced by morphological awareness, these two word-related abilities collaboratively contribute to word-level and text-level comprehension. The current study As reviewed above, previous research concentrating on particular age groups has not fully explored the relationship between all three aspects of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension within a single study. It remains unclear whether different aspects of morphological awareness are similarly associated with Chinese reading comprehension across these developmental stages (Xie et al., 2019 ). The present study expands on previous research by investigating the possible direct and indirect effects of each component of morphological awareness to reading comprehension with a span of elementary grades 2, 4, and 6. These grades represent three distinct periods: the beginning, middle, and higher levels of elementary school. To examine the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, three potential mediators, including vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference, were evaluated. Although the importance of these factors has been identified, research considering the impact of these three factors simultaneously has been limited. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following three research questions: (1) Do three facets of morphological awareness directly contribute to reading comprehension? (2) Do morphological awareness facets indirectly contribute to reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference? (3) Are there any differences in relationships between morphological awareness and reading comprehension across grades 2, 4, and 6? Methods Participants The participants of the present study were 325 children (167 male, 158 female) from grades 2, 4, and 6 at an urban elementary school in Henan Province, mainland China. All participants were native Chinese speakers, with Mandarin being the predominant language in the school context. All children do not have cognitive disabilities or severe reading or linguistic developmental delays, as reported by their teachers. Prior to conducting the study, written informed consent was obtained from the parents of all participating children. The paper-and-pencil tasks and the oral tasks were administered in class sessions and individually, respectively. Measures Nonverbal intelligence Children’s nonverbal IQ was measured using the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven & Raven, 2003 ). For each item, children were required to complete a visual-spatial matrix by choosing the missing piece from six or eight patterned segments. Children got one point for each correct answer. The total score was calculated by adding up the total number of correct items. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .84. Homophone awareness Children’s homophone awareness was assessed using the homophone production test, which was developed for children in mainland China (Shu et al., 2006 ; Zhao et al., 2019 ). In the test, students were first shown how to produce two different novel words using homophones. For instance, the word “圆圈” meaning “circle”, contains the dotted target morpheme “圆”/yuan2/, which also means “circle”. Students were then encouraged to provide two homophones that include the same target morpheme. For example, they may offer “公园” /gong1-yuan2/, which means “park”, and “美元” /mei3-yuan2/, which means “dollar”, both of which contain the morpheme /yuan2/. Selected from the PEP (People’s Education Press) Chinese disciplinary textbook used in mainland, the test items varied by grade to ensure grade-appropriate requirements and to align with the students’ lexical knowledge. This task comprised 2 exercise items and 40 test items. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score was 40. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .95. Homograph awareness Adopting the approach by Zhang et al. ( 2022a ), the homograph awareness task asked the participants to judge the morphemic outlier among the three presented words. For example, 大脑(brain), 小脑(cerebellum), and 电脑(computer) were shown to the students, and they were required to identify which word does not convey morphemic meaning 脑(brain/human organ). The performance of the participating children was scored based on whether they correctly circled the outlier word. There were 2 test items and 20 items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The maximum score for this test was 20. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .70. Compound awareness The compound production task was modeled after those developed by Nagy et al. ( 2003 ), Liu and McBride-Chang ( 2010 ), and Zhang ( 2016b ), and was administered to evaluate children’s crucial awareness of four Chinese compounding structures, including coordinate, subordinate, subject-predicate, and verb-object, in two-word and three-word Chinese compounds in word level (Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ; Zhang et al., 2022a ). In this task, students were encouraged to choose the correct novel words based on the meaning conveyed by a short descriptive scenario. For example, “把金子冻起来叫什么? (If we freeze gold, what will we call it?)”. The best answer is 冻金 (/dong4-jin1/, [frozen gold]). To successfully construct the novel word “冻金”, children need to identify and extract two target and related morphemes “冻” and “金” from the given scenario, and create the correct word in an appropriate compounding structure. This task had 2 exercise items and 20 items. Each correct answer was worth 1 point. The total score for this task was 20. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .61. Vocabulary knowledge The assessment of children’s vocabulary knowledge was conducted using a vocabulary checklist task (Zhang et al., 2022a ). The participants were asked to circle the words they know. A total of 70 two-character words were presented to the students. Among them, there were 53 real words and 17 non-words. Non-words consisted of real characters, but the two-word combinations were illegal in Chinese. For example, 土者 is one of the non-words, both component characters, 土(sand) and 者(person) are real characters, but the combination of the two characters is not of real existence in Chinese. When the data were analyzed, real words selected as known were coded as “real hits” and pseudowords selected as known were coded as “false alarm”; moreover, based on Signal Detection Theory, participants’ scores were computed by true h = \(\:\frac{h-f}{1-f}\) (h: real hits; f: false alarm) (Zhang, 2016b ). There were 2 text items and 70 test items in this measure. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .90. Character recognition A total of 30 Chinese single characters for each grade were selected from the character list of PEP primary school Chinese textbook, ensuring that the task was closely aligned with the curriculum and within the character knowledge of children at different grade levels. Children were required to read each single character. The distribution of characters across different grades was thoughtfully planned: 15 characters were introduced in Grades 1, 3, and 5, and 12 characters were introduced in the first semester of Grades 2, 4, and 6. The final set of 3 characters had not yet been introduced at the testing point, serving as a measure of student’s ability to recognize characters outside of their routine class instruction. There were 2 text items and 30 test items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 30 points. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .92. Lexical inference For the lexical inferencing measure, participants were asked to infer the meaning of unknown words. The measure consisted of two parts to evaluate participants’ lexical inferential ability. In the first part, administered as an independent measure, children were asked to infer the meanings of two-character Chinese compounds. The second part of lexical inference measure was seamlessly integrated in the reading comprehension test, offering a comprehensive approach to language assessment. Children were expected to accurately understand the overall narrative text and then jointly utilize both word-internal (morphological) and word-external (contextual) cues to deduce the meanings of multi-character unfamiliar words within the context of the passage (Zhang, 2016b ). By making correct choices from the provided options, students demonstrate their ability to connect new vocabulary with the context. This measure had 2 practical items and 16 test items. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 16 points. The internal consistency of lexical inferencing was α = .71. Reading comprehension The reading comprehension task evaluated students’ abilities to make appropriate inferences of sentences and main ideas based on the identification and interpretation of textual information. Reading materials were adapted from extracurricular reading practice books for different Chinese graders in elementary school. During the test, participants were required to read three passages and finish eighteen multiple-choice questions which assessed their comprehension and analytical ability through identifying specific information and making text-based inference (Zhang, 2022 a). There were 2 practical items and 18 items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 18 points. The internal consistency of this measure was α = .63. Results Descriptive statistics and correlations Means (M), standard deviations (SD), minimum values (min), maximum values (max), and Cronbach’s alpha of all measures were presented in Table 1 . The reliabilities of all measures were acceptable (ranged from 0.61 to 0.95). There was no data transformation. As demonstrated in Table 2 of bivariate Pearson correlations, almost all variables had significant correlations with each other. Homophone awareness and homograph awareness had moderate correlations with lexical inference (r = 0.352, p < 0.001; r = 0.431, p < 0.001). The correlation between compound awareness and lexical inference was significant but the effect was weak (r = 0.169, p < 0.001). Three facets of morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, character recognition and lexical inference correlated with reading comprehension significantly. Table 1 Descriptive statistics for all variables Variables M SD Min Max Alpha Homophone awareness 33.14 9.16 0 40 0.95 Homograph awareness 18.82 1.18 12 20 0.70 Compound awareness 15.30 2.22 8 20 0.61 Vocabulary knowledge 62.14 7.06 5 69 0.90 Character recognition 24.68 6.34 0 30 0.92 Lexical inference 13.00 2.62 2 16 0.71 Reading comprehension 11.61 2.99 4 18 0.63 Non-verbal intelligence 26.01 3.91 5 30 0.84 Table 2 Pearson correlations among all variables Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Homophone awareness -- 2. Homograph awareness .294** -- 3. Compound awareness .227** .067 -- 4. Vocabulary knowledge .228** .357** .181** -- 5. Character recognition .536** .276** .327** .219** -- 6. Lexical inference .352** .431** .169** .394** .354** -- 7. Reading comprehension .200** .243** .152* .183* .223** .286** -- 8. Non-verbal intelligence .033 .016 − .019 − .029 − .064 .076 .015 -- *p < .05; **p < .001; N = 325 Note. 1. Homophone awareness; 2. Homograph awareness; 3. Compound awareness; 4. Vocabulary knowledge; 5. Character recognition; 6. Lexical inference; 7. Reading comprehension; 8. Non-verbal intelligence Confirmatory identification of preferred models The Pearson correlation matrices showed that there were significant relations of all variables with reading comprehension. Next, a path analysis was conducted to explore the interconnected relationship among three facets of morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, lexical inference, and reading comprehension in Chinese children across Grades 2, 4, and 6. All the models included non-verbal intelligence as the control variable. Starting with the hypothesized full path model (Fig. 1), we tested three direct pathways from homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness to reading comprehension (c1, c2 and c3) and nine parallel pathways (from a1 to a9) to investigate the direct and indirect relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Two alternative path models (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 ) were compared to confirm the applicability to different grades. The first alternative model (Fig. 2 ) assumed that homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness separately predicted the mediating variables (vocabulary knowledge, character recognition), and then each of the mediators predicted reading comprehension through lexical inference. Moreover, this model combined the direct pathways between morphological awareness and reading comprehension with the indirect pathway via lexical inference. The second alternative model (Fig. 3 ) removed the direct pathways and hypothesized that lexical inference mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. By testing the goodness-of-fit measures, we identified four grade-appropriate path diagrams. Since the hypothesized models did not have satisfactory model fit across all grades, several non-significant pathways were removed for model trimming and specification. To evaluate the model fit, the chi-square values, chi-square values to df ratio, comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) were reported for the final models of each grade in Table 5 . Table 5 Model fit of final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6 Grade \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) df \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) /df NFI RFI IFI CFI TLI RMSEA 2(CA) 2.894 3 0.965 0.951 0.837 1.002 1.000 1.007 0.000 4(HMPA) 6.604 5 1.321 0.845 0.930 0.982 0.981 0.962 0.055 4(HMGA) 9.527 5 1.905 0.912 0.825 0.956 0.954 0.908 0.072 6(HMPA) 9.240 5 1.848 0.962 0.923 0.982 0.982 0.963 0.073 Note . CA: compound awareness; HMPA: homophone awareness; HMGA: homograph awareness The model fit indices indicated that the model for Grade 2 (Fig. 4 ) exhibited perfect model fit \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) ( df = 3) = 2.894, p = 0.408, \(\:{\:\chi\:}^{2}\) / df = 0.965, CFI = 1.000, TLI = 1.007, RMSEA = 0.000. The two models for Grade 4 (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 ) had perfect model fit: (1) model for HMPA (Fig. 5 ) \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) ( df = 4) = 6.604, p = 0.252, \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) / df = 1.321, CFI = 0.981, TLI = 0.962, RMSEA = 0.055; (2) model for HMGA (Fig. 6 ) \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) ( df = 5) = 9.527, p = 0.090, \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) / df = 1.905, CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.908, RMSEA = 0.072. The model for Grade 6 (Fig. 7 ) showed perfect model fit \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) ( df = 4) = 9.240, p = .100, \(\:{\chi\:}^{2}\) / df = 1.848, CFI = 0.982, TLI = 0.963, RMSEA = 0.073. Testing direct and indirect effects Table 3 presented the standardized regression weights of pathways in the final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6, respectively. Table 4 provided the preferred indirect paths of the final models and the Bootstrapped 95% confidence interval (CI). The model estimates of the path diagrams (Fig. 4 ) showed that only the compound awareness measures in Grade 2 had significant direct contribution to reading comprehension ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.277, p < 0.05), whereas homophone awareness and homograph awareness did not directly contribute to reading comprehension across all grades. Therefore, the direct paths from homophone awareness to reading comprehension and from homograph awareness to reading comprehension were removed in the preferred models. Through a mediating route of lexical inference, we found that compound awareness had significant contribution to lexical inference in Grade 2 (Fig. 4 , \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.253, p < 0.05) and similarly homograph awareness significantly contributed to lexical inference in Grade 4 (Fig. 6 , \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.547, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the connection between lexical inference and reading comprehension was significant for all grade levels (see Figs. 4 to 7 , G2: \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.214, p < 0.05; G4 (HMPA): \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = .226, p < 0.05; G4 (HMGA): \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = .227, p < 0.05; G6: \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = .328, p < 0.001). In all, the results demonstrated that lexical inference essentially mediated the effects of three facets of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. In addition, the relationship between three facets of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension were closely linked through the chain mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference in all primary grades. The bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval (BCBCI) was used to analyze mediating effects. 95% BIBCIs were produced for the indirect effect of homophone awareness on reading comprehension through vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. As shown in Table 4 , the vocabulary knowledge-lexical indirect pathway had significant indirect effects in both Grade 2 (compound awareness → vocabulary knowledge → lexical inference, \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.011, p < 0.05, CI [0.001, 0.036]) and Grade 6 ((homophone awareness → vocabulary knowledge → lexical inference, \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.018, p < 0.05, CI [0.003, 0.040]). Similarly, the character recognition-lexical inference indirect pathway (Grade 2: compound awareness → character recognition → lexical inference → reading comprehension; Grades 4 & 6: homophone awareness → character recognition → lexical inference → reading comprehension) had significant indirect effects on reading comprehension in Grade 2 ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.012, p < 0.05, CI [0.002, 0.045]) as well as in both Grade 4 ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.017, p < 0.05, CI [0.003, 0.041]) and Grade 6 ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.026, p < 0.05, CI [0.007, 0.056]). A notable shift in the mediating mechanisms linking two facets of Chinese MA to reading comprehension emerged in Grade 4. Homophone awareness statistically contributed to reading comprehension through the sequential mediation of character recognition and vocabulary knowledge ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.018, p < 0.05, CI [0.004, 0.043]). Similarly, homograph awareness also operated through the same character recognition → vocabulary knowledge → reading comprehension chain pathway, but with a significantly stronger indirect effect ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.076, p < 0.05, CI [0.009, 0.211]). Furthermore, homograph awareness demonstrated an additional and substantial effect on reading comprehension via lexical inference ( \(\:\widehat{\beta\:}\) = 0.203, p < 0.05, CI [0.077, 0.374]). These indirect pathways suggested that vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference jointly play essential roles in fully mediating the relationship between different aspects of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension. In summary, only compound awareness had significant direct contributions to reading comprehension. Notably, all three Chinese morphological awareness facets including homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness contributed to reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. It was worth noting that lexical inference appeared to play a leading role in connecting morphological awareness and reading comprehension, surpassing the contributions of other mediators. This finding extended the literature of the importance of lexical inference in L2 learners (Zhang et al., 2021 ). Table 3 Standardized regression weights of final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6 Grade Paths St. β S.E. C.R. p VK← CA .202 .082 2.031 .042 CR ← CA .231 .089 2.337 .019 LEXI← CA .253 .089 2.756 .006 Grade 2 LEXI← VK .257 .090 2.829 .005 LEXI← CR .243 .096 2.667 .008 RC ← CA .277 .087 2.792 .005 RC ← LEXI .214 .110 2.168 .030 CR ← HMPA .477 .057 5.646 *** VK← CR .433 .045 4.992 *** Grade 4 LEXI ← CR .434 .044 5.013 *** (HMPA) RC ← VK .238 .093 2.606 .009 RC ←LEXI .226 .095 2.470 .013 CR ← HMGA .445 .270 5.160 *** Grade 4 VK ← CR .433 .045 4.992 *** (HMGA) RC ← VK .240 .092 2.639 .008 LEXI← HMGA .547 .128 6.787 *** RC ← LEXI .227 .094 2.501 .012 VK← HMPA .476 .052 6.035 *** LEXI← VK .410 .024 5.463 *** Grade 6 RC← LEXI .328 .116 3.866 *** CR← HMPA .793 .043 14.512 *** LEXI← CR .353 .020 4.702 *** ***p < .001 Note. HMPA: homophone awareness, HMGA: homograph awareness, CA: compound awareness, VK: vocabulary knowledge, CR: character recognition, LEXI: lexical inference, RC: reading comprehension Table 4 95% Confidence intervals (CI) for the indirect paths of final models for Grade 2, 4, and 6 Indirect Paths St. β Bootstrapped 95% CI P Lower Upper CA→VK→LEXI .052 .011 .116 .012 VK→LEXI→RC .055 .004 .136 .031 CA→VK→LEXI→RC .011 .001 .036 .023 Grade 2 CA→LEXI→RC .054 .003 .151 .032 CA→CR→LEXI .056 .016 .134 .008 CR→LEXI→RC .052 .004 .154 .028 CA→CR→LEXI→RC .012 .002 .045 .018 HMPA→CR→VK .072 .013 .152 .009 CR→VK→RC .054 .010 .124 .009 Grade 4 HMPA→CR→VK→RC .018 .004 .043 .006 (HMPA) HMPA→CR→LEXI .071 .018 .148 .001 CR→LEXI→RC .052 .014 .099 .003 HMPA→CR→LEXI→RC .017 .003 .041 .002 HMGA→CR→VK .311 .034 .623 .013 Grade 4 CR→VK→RC .054 .010 .118 .012 (HMGA) HMGA→CR→VK→RC .076 .009 .211 .011 HMGA→LEXI→RC .203 .077 .374 .001 HMPA→VK→LEXI .041 .012 .072 .001 VK→LEXI→RC .059 .017 .132 .009 HMPA→VK→LEXI→RC .018 .003 .040 .005 Grade 6 HMPA→CR→LEXI .059 .024 .108 .001 CR→LEXI→RC .043 .013 .088 .002 HMPA→CR→LEXI→RC .026 .007 .056 .002 ***p < .001 Note. HMPA: homophone awareness, HMGA: homograph awareness, CA: compound awareness, VK: vocabulary knowledge, CR: character recognition, LEXI: lexical inference, RC: reading comprehension Discussion In the current cross-sectional study, we aimed to unpack the potential mechanism through which morphological awareness was associated with reading comprehension among Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6. We examined the mediating roles of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference while controlling for non-verbal intelligence. The study yielded three sets of important findings. First, homophone awareness and homograph awareness did not have direct effects on reading comprehension across all grades, and only compound awareness had a direct contribution to reading comprehension among second graders. Second, morphological awareness facets had significant indirect effects on reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. Third, diverse pathway patterns were observed across grades, from the pattern of compound awareness to reading comprehension in Grade 2 to the pattern of homophone awareness and homograph awareness to reading comprehension in Grades 4 and 6. All patterns highlighted the critical mediating role of lexical inference. The first research question examined whether different facets of Chinese morphological awareness directly predicted reading comprehension. Theoretically, morphological awareness should be directly related to reading comprehension through its influence on the general comprehension process (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014 ), and Chinese children are no exception in this regard. However, contrary to our expectation, neither homophone awareness nor homograph awareness was a significant direct predictor of reading comprehension across all grade levels. While they were moderately correlated with reading comprehension in the present study—consistent with prior literature documenting their importance in Chinese reading comprehension (Liu et al., 2013 )—only indirect contribution were identified and solely in the middle and upper grades. Although homophone and homograph awareness are theoretically relevant to Chinese literacy acquisition, they do not appear central to reading comprehension in relatively young children. The absence of significant contributions from homophone and homograph awareness suggests that metalinguistic skills requiring finer phonemic or semantic discrimination at the syllabic or character level exceed the cognitive and linguistic capacities of beginning readers. In addition, we conjectured that the unique effects of homophone awareness and homograph awareness were overshadowed by compound awareness, given the overwhelming prevalence and central importance of compounding in Chinese word formation. The finding that compound awareness directly and indirectly contributed to reading comprehension in second graders resonated with Kim et al. ( 2020 ), who reported similar results among Chinese students of the same age. Aligned with previous studies, our research lent support to the conclusion that Chinese children developed different aspects of morphological awareness at different periods and acquired compound knowledge earlier (Ku & Anderson, 2003 ). This early-emerging capacity for word-level morphological analysis is closely tied to the properties of the Chinese language. Notably, over 75% modern Chinese words are two- or three-morpheme compounds (Chen et al., 2009 ), a feature coupled with the generally high productivity of morphemes and the semantic transparency of compounds in Chinese. These linguistic characteristics give lexical compounding rules a distinctively central role in Chinese morphology, which likely facilitates the early development of compound awareness among elementary school students. With well-developed compound awareness, children can effectively decompose and recombine familiar morphemes within multi-character words. This process directly supports character recognition and the derivation of novel word meanings, thereby facilitating text comprehension and laying a crucial foundation for early reading acquisition. Reaching a ceiling effect (Chen et al., 2009 ) might explain why compound awareness was not detectable in the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese middle and upper graders. Overall, compound awareness made a unique direct contribution to reading comprehension, far exceeding the contribution of homophone awareness and homograph awareness. The second research question was whether vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Although a marginally significant connection was found between homograph awareness and vocabulary knowledge, neither parallel mediation effects nor chain mediation effects were significant between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 6. In addition, the separate contributions of homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness to reading comprehension were fully or partially mediated by the chain effect of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. This finding was consistent with Zhang ( 2016b ), who reported the result that morphological awareness contributed to Chinese reading comprehension via full mediation of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference among younger Chinese primary-age children. However, it is worth noting that indirect contributions of both homophone and homograph awareness were identified among older children. As children progress through primary school, they encounter morphologically complex novel characters in both classroom and everyday reading. Furthermore, homophone and homograph awareness represent key components of Chinese morphological awareness, requiring the reader to distinguish specific homophones and homographs at the morpheme (or character) level (Xie, Zhang, Wu, & Nguyen, 2019 ). Therefore, it is not surprising that awareness of homophone and homograph were initially linked to character recognition. It is striking that homophone and homograph awareness indirectly contributed to reading comprehension in Grade 4. To be specific, both of them initially support character recognition and subsequently facilitate reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference. Thus, we propose that character recognition alone is insufficient for students to identify unfamiliar characters in words and texts. Rather, they require richer word knowledge and compensatory strategies to address the limitations of lower-level character understanding, thereby facilitating the inference and retrieval of lexical meanings, and ultimately supporting the higher-level text comprehension. In contrast to homophone awareness, homograph awareness operated notably through lexical inference alone in the pathway of Grade 4. This pathway suggests that resolving meaning for polysemous characters often necessitates real-time contextual inference, potentially bypassing or supplementing stored vocabulary knowledge. This differentiation underscores that homophone processing is more tightly bound to phonological-orthographic linkage, whereas homograph processing is more reliant on semantic-contextual integration. Thus, we may conclude that children with good morphological awareness and knowledge are able to decompose complex Chinese characters and words into informative parts and use accessible componential information to estimate the meanings of unfamiliar words (Ku & Anderson, 2003 ), thereby facilitating the retrieval of textual meanings. In particular, our study demonstrated the importance of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Although homophone awareness and homograph awareness were removed from the preferred model of Grade 2, it was also notable that three aspects of morphological awareness measured in this study significantly affected lexical inference and contributed to reading comprehension through the mediation of lexical inference. As noted earlier, homophone awareness and homograph awareness were relatively weak predictors of reading comprehension among all Chinese primary-age students. Neither form of awareness showed a direct relationship with reading comprehension. Interestingly, lexical inference mediated the indirect relationship, either independently or in conjunction with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, which were initially influenced by homophone awareness or homograph awareness. In the current study, lexical inference referred to the ability of using interword information and intraword clues to derive the meaning of an unknown word (Zhang, 2015 ). The inferencing process involved various cognitive decisions and was influenced by different contributing factors (Zhang et al., 2022b ). Successful inferencing was closely related to vocabulary breadth and depth (O’Brien, Cook, & Lorch, 2015 ) and inferencing strategies (Nassaji, 2006 ). As a facet of metalinguistic awareness, morphological awareness entailed knowledge about word structure and word meaning (Zhang & Koda, 2018 ), both of which may be activated in facilitating inferencing process (Zhang et al., 2022b ). This study found that the indirect contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension via lexical inference was statistically significant. To be specific, compound awareness corresponds to morphological awareness at the word level, as opposed to homophone awareness and homograph awareness, which operate at the character level (Han et al., 2022 ; Xie et al., 2019 ), all of which were linked to text-level reading comprehension via the key mediation of lexical inference. This result confirmed the intermediary facilitating role of lexical inference in connecting local semantic abstraction and activation with further retrieval of contextual meaning (Zhang et al., 2021 ). More comprehensively, our finding highlighted the central role of lexical inference in connecting the word identification system and the comprehension system (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014 ). Our finding converged with that of Zhang et al. ( 2022b ) and extended it to native Chinese learners across elementary grades. The remaining question was about the different patterns in the association between the three facets of morphological awareness and reading comprehension across primary grades. Compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness have been confirmed as crucial predictors of vocabulary growth among Chinese elementary-age children (Cheng, Li, & Wu, 2015 ; Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ; Liu et al., 2013 ; Pang & Son, 2024 ). Consistent with previous studies, our current study obtained results indicating that compound awareness predicted reading comprehension in Grade 2, while homophone awareness and homograph awareness predicted reading comprehension in Grades 4 and 6. It was not surprising that compound awareness was found to have a direct relationship with reading comprehension in early Chinese graders, as it is the most fundamental component in Chinese morphological awareness, referring to the analytical ability of word structure and production (Liu & McBride-Chang, 2010 ). Our findings aligned with previous empirical evidence indicating that children in Grade 2 begin to develop their Chinese- specific compound awareness (Ku & Anderson, 2003 ; Chen et al., 2009 ) and children in Grades 4 and 6 are capable of morphological analysis (Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987 ), which is essential for distinguishing homophones and homographs. In contrast, the direct and indirect relationships of homograph awareness with mediating factors and reading comprehension across grades were not statistically significant in either second or sixth grade. Homograph, as a salient feature of Chinese, was prevalent in young children’s early learning activities (Han et al., 2022 ). Therefore, homograph awareness may be equally necessary as homophone awareness and compound awareness in establishing the foundation of vocabulary and literacy development. However, our unexpected result regarding the relationship between homograph awareness and reading comprehension among young children was inconsistent with previous studies, such as Han et al. ( 2022 ), who underscored the important contribution of homograph awareness to vocabulary growth in formal Chinese elementary instruction and home literacy development from an ecological perspective. This inconsistency led to a more complicated picture for the theoretical conceptualization of the multidimensionality of Chinese morphological awareness. A transitional shift occurred in the pattern of morphological awareness facets associated with reading comprehension between lower and upper grades. Chinese students are introduced to the alphabetic coding system known as Pinyin in Grade 1, which facilitates their initial decoding skills; however, the use of Pinyin becomes less frequent from Grade 2 onwards (Pang & Son, 2024 ). The use of Pinyin during the initial stages of learning to read enhances young children’s sensitivity to phonological knowledge (Shu, Peng, & McBride-Chang, 2008 ). However, the extensive number of homophones in Chinese poses a great challenge for children in higher grades when recognizing more complex unfamiliar characters and words. Insufficient exposure to phonological knowledge prevents children from making connections between decoding and pronunciation. Consequently, children may derive the meanings of homophones by analyzing internal structure of characters and employing supportive radical awareness (Shu & Anderson, 1997 ) and semantic clues, which in turn enhance word understanding and ultimately benefit reading comprehension. Homophone is also considered as morpheme awareness, meaning that “one syllable may represent different meanings (morphemes)” (Liu et al., 2013 ). According to the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, skilled readers, who have higher quality representations of general vocabulary, show quicker homophone confusions than less skilled readers (Perfetti & Hart, 2002 ). Based on our study, the relationship between homophone awareness and reading comprehension did not disappear with grade advancement. One possible interpretation is that homophone awareness and compound awareness focus on different features of language, and this leads to their individual developmental trajectories (Liu et al., 2013 ). Only with sufficient knowledge can children easily identify homophones and activate awareness to recognize morphemes that had identical pronunciation but different meanings. Therefore, homophone awareness holds an advantage among older children (Liu et al., 2013 ). Our study highlighted the strong association of homophone awareness with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, suggesting their cross-grade potential in connecting with lexical inference to facilitate reading comprehension in higher primary school children. As shown in the final models and discussed above, all Chinese morphological awareness facets established well-defined association with mediators and reading comprehension across all primary grade levels. All of them tended to be important for vocabulary knowledge and character recognition and played slightly different roles in affecting reading comprehension across age groups. Furthermore, lexical inference acted as an indispensable mediator in the indirect effects of all three facets of Chinese morphological awareness on reading comprehension. Limitations and future directions This study provided empirical evidence for the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness to reading comprehension for Chinese children in elementary school. Our findings underscored a pattern whereby vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, together with lexical inference, jointly mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. These findings demonstrated the importance of morphological awareness to reading-related outcomes. There were several limitations of the present study. First, the sample was relatively small and limited. Only children from Grades 2, 4, and 6 participated in the study. Future research should employ a larger sample size across different age levels to validate these findings. Second, we only controlled for the effect of non-verbal intelligence in the identified models. Future studies should consider including additional confounding variables. Third, the cross-sectional nature of the current study limited our ability to trace the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension as grade levels increased. Collecting longitudinal data over a longer period in future studies will enable us to better estimate the developmental trajectories of morphological awareness and reading outcomes. Declarations Data Availability No data has been shared for this study due to restrictions concerning participant privacy and confidentiality. The Data will be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Ethics Statement This study was granted the ethical approval by the City University of Macau, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Ethics Committee (ref: FHSS250018) on 6 March 2025. This study was conducted in compliance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and other applicable guidelines and regulations concerning research involving human participants. Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all participants, their parents and teachers prior to data collection. The consent process was administered in written form by the contributing author on 13 March 2025 at the target primary school. Participants, along with their parents and teachers, were provided with a detailed consent form outlining the study’s purpose, procedures, potential risks, benefits, their voluntary participation, and the right to withdraw. All parties had the opportunity to ask questions before providing consent. Following the process, signed consent forms were collected from all participants and their parents and teachers by the contributing author and have been securely archived in accordance with data protection policies. References Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In: L.B. Feldman (ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). 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Word knowledge dimensions in L2 lexical inference: Testing vocabulary knowledge and partial word knowledge. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 51 , 151-168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09831-x Zhang, H., Zhang, X., Li, M., & Zhang, Y. (2021). Morphological awareness in L2 Chinese reading comprehension: Testing of mediating routes. Frontiers in Psychology , 12 , Article 736933. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736933 Zhang, H., Zhang, X., Wang, C., Sun, J., & Pei, Z. (2022b). Word knowledge in L2 Chinese lexical inference: A moderated path analysis of language proficiency level and heritage status. Frontiers in Psychology , 13 , Article 869368. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.869368 Zhao, Y., Wu, X., Sun, P., Xie, R., Feng, J., & Chen, H. (2019). The relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese children: Evidence from multiple mediation models. Learning and Individual Differences , 72 , 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.04.005 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. 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16:52:22","extension":"sav","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":1619,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"RawdataGrade4.sav","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8620769/v1/d07718f38135c8780fb2be28.sav"},{"id":103506918,"identity":"99fb2d82-8c87-40d9-9b21-1b9f9b084c20","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-02-26 13:39:55","extension":"sav","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":1731,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"RawdataGrade6.sav","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8620769/v1/3b0e12d5bfc3d3b9fa863547.sav"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Children: Testing of Cross-grade Paths","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe ability to read and comprehend what they read is an essential skill for children to acquire and develop during their primary school years. A growing body of research has found that morphological awareness (MA) uniquely contributes to reading comprehension across languages concurrently and longitudinally beyond substantive control measures \u003cb\u003e(\u003c/b\u003ee.g. Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Ku \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). MA is a metalinguistic skill involving the ability to reflect on and manipulate the morphemic structure of words (Carlisle, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1995\u003c/span\u003e), which should be understood at both the morpheme and morphological structure levels (Zhao et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Different from alphabetic languages, Chinese is a logographic writing system, in which basic written symbols and morphemes exhibit morphologically transparent one-to-one correspondence (Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). MA is particularly important for Chinese children given its distinct orthographic and linguistic features exhibiting the separation of phonological and morphological information and the maintains of morphemes\u0026rsquo; orthographic representation in different characters (Kim et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Being aware of features of these words, children can reflect on and manipulate homophonic and homographic morphemes and the morphological compound structure of words (Carlisle, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1995\u003c/span\u003e; Kuo \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Related studies have highlighted the facilitative role of all three types of Chinese MA (compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness) in reading comprehension among primary-aged Chinese children (e.g. Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDespite a strong correlation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese, most previous research examined this relationship in one or two primary grades and few studies tapped the contribution of all three distinct subcomponents of Chinese MA to reading comprehension in young Chinese students. The current study extends the previous research by investigating three facets of Chinese morphological awareness (compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness) and their relationship with reading comprehension among Chinese-speaking children across grades 2, 4, and 6. Previous research indicates that morphological awareness becomes increasingly important in reading development with grades (Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Focusing on children of early, middle, and upper primary levels allows us to better understand how MA functions in contributing to reading ability at different elementary stages. More critically, our research was inspired by the reading systems framework (Perfetti, Landi, \u0026amp; Oakhil, 2005), which provides a theoretical overview on the role of morphology. This framework posits morphology as a valuable source of knowledge that contributes to morphological awareness and thus facilitates reading comprehension both directly and indirectly (Levesque, Kieffer, \u0026amp; Deacon, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), as well as the direct and indirect effects model of reading (DIER; Kim, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e), which specifies the precise mechanisms and pathways through which morphological awareness influences reading comprehension. Notably, Chinese MA facets may differentially influence reading comprehension. Understanding how these predictors interact and whether their roles are consistent among children across primary levels remains a critical issue. To give an overview, the current research employed cross-sectional design to test possible direct and indirect relations between Chinese MA facets and reading comprehension across early-middle-upper primary grades, after controlling for nonverbal intelligence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eContributions of Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMorpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language, morphological awareness refers to one\u0026rsquo;s ability to identify, analyze, and manipulate morphemes and word formation rules (Kuo \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e). Due to the productivity of compound words and the prevalence of homophonic and homographic morphemes in Chinese, compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness are three important indicators that are conceptualized in the comprehensive model of Chinese MA (Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). This conceptualization captures the typical characteristics of Chinese language at both morpheme level and word level (Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Comparing with morphophonemic language, Chinese MA has been shown to play a significant role in reading comprehension (Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Morphological awareness greatly contributes to different levels of Chinese reading skills development and more critically these skills are essential for advanced-level meaning-based processing, such as text comprehension (Pan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Furthermore, different pathways through which Chinese MA facets contribute to reading development have been discussed in previous research involving native Chinese-speaking children in elementary schools.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eCompound awareness is the most fundamental facet of Chinese MA, referring to the capacity to analyze the combination of morphemes and the resultant formation of vocabulary (Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e). More than 70% words in Chinese are compounds, and the morphemes are relatively free in forming two- or more-character compound words (Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Xia et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Being aware of predominant compounds in Chinese morphology, children may effectively understand and manipulate morphological compounding structure rules and thus enhance their reading comprehension (Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Xia et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). A growing number of studies on Chinese reading skills highlighted the importance of MA, especially compound awareness, in relatively young primary-aged children. Zhang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016a\u003c/span\u003e) investigated the concurrent and longitudinal effects of Chinese-specific MA (compound awareness) on the development of reading comprehension among Chinese children in Grade 2. The findings indicated that MA had a notable impact on reading comprehension and suggested the significant mediation of lexical inference ability. Similarly, the study of Kim et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) provided more insights into the close relationship of compound awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese second-graders. The results reported that compound awareness was directly related to reading comprehension, as well as indirectly through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, word reading, and listening comprehension. With a sample of Chinese children from grade 1 to 2, the results of Cheng et al.\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e) longitudinal study suggested that initial status and growth rates of compound awareness significantly contribute to reading comprehension at the end of second grade and word-reading efficiency fully mediates that relationship. A different result is from the longitudinal study of Xie et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), which examined the developmental relationships between three facets of Chinese MA and reading comprehension in Chinse children from Grades 1, 3, and 5. The result suggests a significant direct contribution of compound awareness to reading comprehension only from Grade 5 to 6. Take together, these studies provide evidence for multiple ways that compound awareness makes a contribution to reading comprehension in Chinese. Although the predictive role of compound awareness has been found in both lower and upper grades, inconsistent findings across studies, particularly regarding the middle grades, indicate a need for further investigation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHomophone awareness refers to the ability to comprehend that morphemes of identical pronunciation may have different meanings (Li et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e). In Mandarin Chinese, the average number of homophones per syllable exceeds five (Li et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e). Moreover, the abundance of homophones in Chinese imposes considerable challenges for children to identify specific morphemes especially in the absence of knowledge regarding the written representations (Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). This is because Chinese homophones share identical pronunciation, but exhibit marked differences in morphology, orthography, and meaning (Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). With homophone awareness children can distinguish homophonic characters which share identical syllable (e.g., /yuan2/) but represent different morphemes (e.g., 元\u0026ldquo;money\u0026rdquo;, 员\u0026ldquo;person\u0026rdquo;, 园\u0026ldquo;garden\u0026rdquo;, 圆\u0026ldquo;circle\u0026rdquo;) (Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Some researchers investigated the relation between homophone awareness and reading comprehension. In Xie et al.\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) longitudinal study with a sample of Chinese children from grades 1, 3, and 5, failed to detect a predictive contribution of homophone awareness to later reading comprehension across grades, after controlling for word reading, vocabulary knowledge, IQ, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness. In contrast to the results of Xie et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), a group of Chinese second graders with reading difficulties were assessed and the results suggested that homophone awareness together with compound awareness and homograph awareness made a direct and independent contribution to reading comprehension after accounting for phonological awareness and RAN; this relationship was partially mediated by vocabulary knowledge and character recognition (Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Despite the increasing research on the relationship between homophone awareness and reading comprehension, there were inconsistent results across the aforementioned studies, which involved different groups of Chinese students and control variables.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eApart from homophone awareness, homograph awareness is another facet of Chinese MA at the morpheme level, which refers to the capacity to discern the different meanings of a single written character within given words (Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). The substantial number of Chinese words is homographic, representing two or more morphemes. This implies that children benefit from learning homographs for vocabulary development and reading comprehension, as they can recognize and distinguish that a familiar character may bear varied meanings within different vocabularies in text (e.g., 信/xin4/ in书信/shu1xin4/ means \u0026ldquo;letter\u0026rdquo;, but in 诚信/cheng2xin4/ means \u0026ldquo;honesty\u0026rdquo;) (Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). To put it differently, the development of homograph awareness can help children enrich vocabulary knowledge and improve lexical comprehension through processing homographic characters\u0026rsquo; meanings in different words (Cheng et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Chen, Yao, \u0026amp; Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). With the exception of the studies as follows, a limited number of studies have probed the relation between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese children and the findings regarding that relation is mixed. Pang and Son\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) study of Grade 2 Chinese children with reading difficulties found a direct contribution of homograph awareness to reading comprehension and this relationship also mediated by vocabulary knowledge and character recognition. Conversely, Xie et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) reported no unique association between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in young Chinese children across primary school years. While these findings provide some evidence to the relationship between homograph awareness and reading comprehension, more comprehensive research is needed to ascertain whether homograph awareness plays a role in reading comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eIndirect pathways between Chinese morphological awareness facets and reading comprehension\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe indirect pathways of the relation of Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension have been investigated in previous studies, which found that morphological awareness was related to reading comprehension via the route of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference ability with different groups of Chinese students. As mentioned earlier, DIER specifies multiple plausible indirect pathways by which morphological awareness is connected with reading comprehension, as the contribution of component skills to reading comprehension is not always uniformly direct (Kim, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMorphological awareness is a key resource for the development of vocabulary knowledge and plays a powerful role in facilitating learners\u0026rsquo; vocabulary acquisition (Xia et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). With well-developed homophone awareness, children positively recognize homophonic morphemes (characters) in diversified word forms and differentiate meanings of identical syllables. With highly developed homograph awareness, children are easier to fixate on the multiple meanings of the same characters in different words. Moreover, children with proficient compound awareness can efficiently analyze compound structure of words and make reasonable inferences about the meanings of constituent morphemes. As a linguistic variable, vocabulary knowledge, including vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth, has been shown to have a strong association with reading comprehension in previous studies with Chinese students during their elementary school years (Teng \u0026amp; Cui, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Wang \u0026amp; Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e). A 4-year longitudinal study in third-grade Chinese children of Wang et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) found a significant predictive effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in grade 4 and bidirectional predictive relationships between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in grades 3 to 4 and grades 4 to 6. Moreover, Pang and Son (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) discovered vocabulary knowledge mediate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Chinese second graders. These studies suggest an indirect morphological pathway to reading with mediation of vocabulary knowledge across Chinese primary grades.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFollowing this line of inquiry, character recognition has been proposed as an additional potential mediator to disentangle the mediating mechanism linking Chinese morphological awareness to reading comprehension. Different with lexical compounding structure at the word level, awareness of Chinese character operates the internal structure at the character level (Li et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). In semantically transparent Chinese, character is viewed as the basic graphic unit which typically comprises a phonetic radical and a semantic radical (Hoosain, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e) and is recognized by analyzing the internal structure (Shu \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e). Specifically, \u0026ldquo;characters in Chinese text have clear boundaries and convey meanings\u0026rdquo; (Pan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e, p. 3). Therefore, young Chinese children may place considerable reliance on character recognition at the early stage of learning to read sentences or discourse, especially when they lack reading experience (Pan et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). As a type of word-level reading skill, character recognition is substantially influenced by linguistic context. Therefore, character recognition has been used as a measure to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in empirical studies. Regarding mediation, Zhao et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) examined multiple mediation models of how morphological awareness contributed to reading comprehension among Chinese children from grades 1 to 3. Their findings suggested that morphological awareness notably predicted reading comprehension via character recognition and reading fluency longitudinally. In addition, Pang and Son (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) found a significant partial mediation effect of character recognition on the relationship between Chinese MA and reading comprehension among second-grade students with reading difficulties in Chinese mainland.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLexical inference ability refers to the capacity to make \u0026ldquo;informed guesses as to the meaning of a word in the light of all available linguistic cues in combination with the learner\u0026rsquo;s general knowledge of the world, her awareness of the co-text and her relevant linguistic knowledge\u0026rdquo; (Haastrup, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e, p. 40). Students can successfully derive meanings of unknown words by jointly drawing upon available linguistic cues (morphological information) and contextual cues (semantic information) (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022b\u003c/span\u003e), as well as prior knowledge of world (Haastrup, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e). Consequently, successful lexical inference by young children partially depends on word-internal knowledge and word-external information in text (Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). Given the role of lexical inference in establishing the linkage between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, Zhang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e) tested the contribution of morphological awareness to literacy acquisition among Chinese students in Grade 2 and found that this contribution was fully mediated by vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference. In the same vein, Zhang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016b\u003c/span\u003e) further verified the mediating effect of lexical inference in the indirect path between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese primary students. Notably, prior studies confirmed the important roles of both vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference in close connection between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Theoretically speaking, vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference are two intertwined constructs in facilitating word acquisition (Zhang \u0026amp; Pei, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Influenced by morphological awareness, these two word-related abilities collaboratively contribute to word-level and text-level comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eThe current study\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs reviewed above, previous research concentrating on particular age groups has not fully explored the relationship between all three aspects of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension within a single study. It remains unclear whether different aspects of morphological awareness are similarly associated with Chinese reading comprehension across these developmental stages (Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). The present study expands on previous research by investigating the possible direct and indirect effects of each component of morphological awareness to reading comprehension with a span of elementary grades 2, 4, and 6. These grades represent three distinct periods: the beginning, middle, and higher levels of elementary school. To examine the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, three potential mediators, including vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference, were evaluated. Although the importance of these factors has been identified, research considering the impact of these three factors simultaneously has been limited. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following three research questions: (1) Do three facets of morphological awareness directly contribute to reading comprehension? (2) Do morphological awareness facets indirectly contribute to reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference? (3) Are there any differences in relationships between morphological awareness and reading comprehension across grades 2, 4, and 6?\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methods","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eParticipants\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe participants of the present study were 325 children (167 male, 158 female) from grades 2, 4, and 6 at an urban elementary school in Henan Province, mainland China. All participants were native Chinese speakers, with Mandarin being the predominant language in the school context. All children do not have cognitive disabilities or severe reading or linguistic developmental delays, as reported by their teachers. Prior to conducting the study, written informed consent was obtained from the parents of all participating children. The paper-and-pencil tasks and the oral tasks were administered in class sessions and individually, respectively.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMeasures\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eNonverbal intelligence\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eChildren\u0026rsquo;s nonverbal IQ was measured using the Raven\u0026rsquo;s Progressive Matrices (Raven \u0026amp; Raven, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). For each item, children were required to complete a visual-spatial matrix by choosing the missing piece from six or eight patterned segments. Children got one point for each correct answer. The total score was calculated by adding up the total number of correct items. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.84.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHomophone awareness\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChildren\u0026rsquo;s homophone awareness was assessed using the homophone production test, which was developed for children in mainland China (Shu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e; Zhao et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). In the test, students were first shown how to produce two different novel words using homophones. For instance, the word \u0026ldquo;圆圈\u0026rdquo; meaning \u0026ldquo;circle\u0026rdquo;, contains the dotted target morpheme \u0026ldquo;圆\u0026rdquo;/yuan2/, which also means \u0026ldquo;circle\u0026rdquo;. Students were then encouraged to provide two homophones that include the same target morpheme. For example, they may offer \u0026ldquo;公园\u0026rdquo; /gong1-yuan2/, which means \u0026ldquo;park\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;美元\u0026rdquo; /mei3-yuan2/, which means \u0026ldquo;dollar\u0026rdquo;, both of which contain the morpheme /yuan2/. Selected from the PEP (People\u0026rsquo;s Education Press) Chinese disciplinary textbook used in mainland, the test items varied by grade to ensure grade-appropriate requirements and to align with the students\u0026rsquo; lexical knowledge. This task comprised 2 exercise items and 40 test items. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score was 40. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.95.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHomograph awareness\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdopting the approach by Zhang et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022a\u003c/span\u003e), the homograph awareness task asked the participants to judge the morphemic outlier among the three presented words. For example, 大脑(brain), 小脑(cerebellum), and 电脑(computer) were shown to the students, and they were required to identify which word does not convey morphemic meaning 脑(brain/human organ). The performance of the participating children was scored based on whether they correctly circled the outlier word. There were 2 test items and 20 items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The maximum score for this test was 20. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.70.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eCompound awareness\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe compound production task was modeled after those developed by Nagy et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e), Liu and McBride-Chang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e), and Zhang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016b\u003c/span\u003e), and was administered to evaluate children\u0026rsquo;s crucial awareness of four Chinese compounding structures, including coordinate, subordinate, subject-predicate, and verb-object, in two-word and three-word Chinese compounds in word level (Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022a\u003c/span\u003e). In this task, students were encouraged to choose the correct novel words based on the meaning conveyed by a short descriptive scenario. For example, \u0026ldquo;把金子冻起来叫什么? (If we freeze gold, what will we call it?)\u0026rdquo;. The best answer is 冻金 (/dong4-jin1/, [frozen gold]). To successfully construct the novel word \u0026ldquo;冻金\u0026rdquo;, children need to identify and extract two target and related morphemes \u0026ldquo;冻\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;金\u0026rdquo; from the given scenario, and create the correct word in an appropriate compounding structure. This task had 2 exercise items and 20 items. Each correct answer was worth 1 point. The total score for this task was 20. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.61.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eVocabulary knowledge\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe assessment of children\u0026rsquo;s vocabulary knowledge was conducted using a vocabulary checklist task (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022a\u003c/span\u003e). The participants were asked to circle the words they know. A total of 70 two-character words were presented to the students. Among them, there were 53 real words and 17 non-words. Non-words consisted of real characters, but the two-word combinations were illegal in Chinese. For example, 土者 is one of the non-words, both component characters, 土(sand) and 者(person) are real characters, but the combination of the two characters is not of real existence in Chinese. When the data were analyzed, real words selected as known were coded as \u0026ldquo;real hits\u0026rdquo; and pseudowords selected as known were coded as \u0026ldquo;false alarm\u0026rdquo;; moreover, based on Signal Detection Theory, participants\u0026rsquo; scores were computed by \u003cem\u003etrue h\u003c/em\u003e =\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\frac{h-f}{1-f}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e (h: real hits; f: false alarm) (Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016b\u003c/span\u003e). There were 2 text items and 70 test items in this measure. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.90.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec13\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eCharacter recognition\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eA total of 30 Chinese single characters for each grade were selected from the character list of PEP primary school Chinese textbook, ensuring that the task was closely aligned with the curriculum and within the character knowledge of children at different grade levels. Children were required to read each single character. The distribution of characters across different grades was thoughtfully planned: 15 characters were introduced in Grades 1, 3, and 5, and 12 characters were introduced in the first semester of Grades 2, 4, and 6. The final set of 3 characters had not yet been introduced at the testing point, serving as a measure of student\u0026rsquo;s ability to recognize characters outside of their routine class instruction. There were 2 text items and 30 test items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 30 points. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.92.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec14\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eLexical inference\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003e For the lexical inferencing measure, participants were asked to infer the meaning of unknown words. The measure consisted of two parts to evaluate participants\u0026rsquo; lexical inferential ability. In the first part, administered as an independent measure, children were asked to infer the meanings of two-character Chinese compounds. The second part of lexical inference measure was seamlessly integrated in the reading comprehension test, offering a comprehensive approach to language assessment. Children were expected to accurately understand the overall narrative text and then jointly utilize both word-internal (morphological) and word-external (contextual) cues to deduce the meanings of multi-character unfamiliar words within the context of the passage (Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016b\u003c/span\u003e). By making correct choices from the provided options, students demonstrate their ability to connect new vocabulary with the context. This measure had 2 practical items and 16 test items. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 16 points. The internal consistency of lexical inferencing was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.71.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec15\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eReading comprehension\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe reading comprehension task evaluated students\u0026rsquo; abilities to make appropriate inferences of sentences and main ideas based on the identification and interpretation of textual information. Reading materials were adapted from extracurricular reading practice books for different Chinese graders in elementary school. During the test, participants were required to read three passages and finish eighteen multiple-choice questions which assessed their comprehension and analytical ability through identifying specific information and making text-based inference (Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003ea). There were 2 practical items and 18 items in this measure. 1 point was awarded for a right answer. The total score of this task is 18 points. The internal consistency of this measure was α\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;.63.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec17\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eDescriptive statistics and correlations\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eMeans (M), standard deviations (SD), minimum values (min), maximum values (max), and Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha of all measures were presented in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e. The reliabilities of all measures were acceptable (ranged from 0.61 to 0.95). There was no data transformation. As demonstrated in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e of bivariate Pearson correlations, almost all variables had significant correlations with each other. Homophone awareness and homograph awareness had moderate correlations with lexical inference (r\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.352, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001; r\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.431, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001). The correlation between compound awareness and lexical inference was significant but the effect was weak (r\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.169, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001). Three facets of morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, character recognition and lexical inference correlated with reading comprehension significantly.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDescriptive statistics for all variables\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"6\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVariables\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eM\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSD\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMin\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eMax\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlpha\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHomophone awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e33.14\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e9.16\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e40\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.95\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHomograph awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e18.82\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.18\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e12\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e20\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.70\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCompound awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e15.30\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.22\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e8\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e20\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.61\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVocabulary knowledge\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e62.14\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e7.06\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e69\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.90\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCharacter recognition\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e24.68\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6.34\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e30\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.92\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLexical inference\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e13.00\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.62\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e16\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.71\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eReading comprehension\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e11.61\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.99\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e18\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.63\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eNon-verbal intelligence\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e26.01\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e3.91\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e30\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.84\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePearson correlations among all variables\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"9\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c7\" colnum=\"7\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c8\" colnum=\"8\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c9\" colnum=\"9\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVariables\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e8\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1. Homophone awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2. Homograph awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.294**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e3. Compound awareness\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.227**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.067\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4. Vocabulary knowledge\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.228**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.357**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.181**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5. Character recognition\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.536**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.276**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.327**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.219**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6. Lexical inference\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.352**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.431**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.169**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.394**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.354**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e7. Reading comprehension\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.200**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.243**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.152*\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.183*\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.223**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.286**\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e8. Non-verbal intelligence\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.033\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.016\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;.019\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;.029\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;.064\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.076\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.015\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e--\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003ctfoot\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"9\"\u003e*p \u0026lt; .05; **p \u0026lt; .001; N\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;325\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"9\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote.\u003c/em\u003e 1. Homophone awareness; 2. Homograph awareness; 3. Compound awareness; 4. Vocabulary knowledge; 5. Character recognition; 6. Lexical inference; 7. Reading comprehension; 8. Non-verbal intelligence\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tfoot\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec18\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eConfirmatory identification of preferred models\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Pearson correlation matrices showed that there were significant relations of all variables with reading comprehension. Next, a path analysis was conducted to explore the interconnected relationship among three facets of morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, lexical inference, and reading comprehension in Chinese children across Grades 2, 4, and 6. All the models included non-verbal intelligence as the control variable. Starting with the hypothesized full path model (Fig.\u0026nbsp;1), we tested three direct pathways from homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness to reading comprehension (c1, c2 and c3) and nine parallel pathways (from a1 to a9) to investigate the direct and indirect relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Two alternative path models (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e and Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e) were compared to confirm the applicability to different grades. The first alternative model (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e) assumed that homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness separately predicted the mediating variables (vocabulary knowledge, character recognition), and then each of the mediators predicted reading comprehension through lexical inference. Moreover, this model combined the direct pathways between morphological awareness and reading comprehension with the indirect pathway via lexical inference. The second alternative model (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e) removed the direct pathways and hypothesized that lexical inference mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy testing the goodness-of-fit measures, we identified four grade-appropriate path diagrams. Since the hypothesized models did not have satisfactory model fit across all grades, several non-significant pathways were removed for model trimming and specification. To evaluate the model fit, the chi-square values, chi-square values to df ratio, comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) were reported for the final models of each grade in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab3\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 5\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eModel fit of final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"10\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c7\" colnum=\"7\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c8\" colnum=\"8\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c9\" colnum=\"9\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c10\" colnum=\"10\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003edf\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e/df\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eNFI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRFI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIFI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCFI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eTLI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRMSEA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2(CA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.894\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.965\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.951\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.837\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.002\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.000\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.007\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.000\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4(HMPA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6.604\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.321\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.845\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.930\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.982\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.981\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.962\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.055\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4(HMGA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e9.527\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.905\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.912\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.825\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.956\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.954\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.908\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.072\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6(HMPA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e9.240\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e1.848\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.962\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.923\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.982\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.982\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.963\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e0.073\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003ctfoot\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"10\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote\u003c/em\u003e. CA: compound awareness; HMPA: homophone awareness; HMGA: homograph awareness\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tfoot\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe model fit indices indicated that the model for Grade 2 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e) exhibited perfect model fit \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e(\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;3)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;2.894, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.408,\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\:\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e/\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.965, CFI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.000, TLI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.007, RMSEA\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.000. The two models for Grade 4 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e and Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e) had perfect model fit: (1) model for HMPA (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e) \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e(\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;4)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;6.604, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.252, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e/\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.321, CFI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.981, TLI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.962, RMSEA\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.055; (2) model for HMGA (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e) \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e(\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;5)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;9.527, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.090, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e/\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.905, CFI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.954, TLI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.908, RMSEA\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.072. The model for Grade 6 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig6\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e7\u003c/span\u003e) showed perfect model fit \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e(\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;4)\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;9.240, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e = .100, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:{\\chi\\:}^{2}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e/\u003cem\u003edf\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.848, CFI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.982, TLI\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.963, RMSEA\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.073.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec26\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eTesting direct and indirect effects\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e presented the standardized regression weights of pathways in the final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6, respectively. Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e provided the preferred indirect paths of the final models and the Bootstrapped 95% confidence interval (CI). The model estimates of the path diagrams (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e) showed that only the compound awareness measures in Grade 2 had significant direct contribution to reading comprehension (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.277, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05), whereas homophone awareness and homograph awareness did not directly contribute to reading comprehension across all grades. Therefore, the direct paths from homophone awareness to reading comprehension and from homograph awareness to reading comprehension were removed in the preferred models. Through a mediating route of lexical inference, we found that compound awareness had significant contribution to lexical inference in Grade 2 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= 0.253, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05) and similarly homograph awareness significantly contributed to lexical inference in Grade 4 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= 0.547, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001). Meanwhile, the connection between lexical inference and reading comprehension was significant for all grade levels (see Figs.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e to \u003cspan refid=\"Fig6\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e7\u003c/span\u003e, G2: \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= 0.214, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05; G4 (HMPA): \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= .226, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05; G4 (HMGA): \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= .227, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05; G6: \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= .328, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.001). In all, the results demonstrated that lexical inference essentially mediated the effects of three facets of morphological awareness on reading comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn addition, the relationship between three facets of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension were closely linked through the chain mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference in all primary grades. The bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval (BCBCI) was used to analyze mediating effects. 95% BIBCIs were produced for the indirect effect of homophone awareness on reading comprehension through vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. As shown in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e, the vocabulary knowledge-lexical indirect pathway had significant indirect effects in both Grade 2 (compound awareness \u0026rarr; vocabulary knowledge \u0026rarr; lexical inference, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e= 0.011, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.001, 0.036]) and Grade 6 ((homophone awareness \u0026rarr; vocabulary knowledge \u0026rarr; lexical inference, \u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.018, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.003, 0.040]). Similarly, the character recognition-lexical inference indirect pathway (Grade 2: compound awareness \u0026rarr; character recognition \u0026rarr; lexical inference \u0026rarr; reading comprehension; Grades 4 \u0026amp; 6: homophone awareness \u0026rarr; character recognition \u0026rarr; lexical inference \u0026rarr; reading comprehension) had significant indirect effects on reading comprehension in Grade 2 (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.012, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.002, 0.045]) as well as in both Grade 4 (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.017, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.003, 0.041]) and Grade 6 (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.026, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.007, 0.056]).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA notable shift in the mediating mechanisms linking two facets of Chinese MA to reading comprehension emerged in Grade 4. Homophone awareness statistically contributed to reading comprehension through the sequential mediation of character recognition and vocabulary knowledge (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.018, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.004, 0.043]). Similarly, homograph awareness also operated through the same character recognition \u0026rarr; vocabulary knowledge \u0026rarr; reading comprehension chain pathway, but with a significantly stronger indirect effect (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.076, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.009, 0.211]). Furthermore, homograph awareness demonstrated an additional and substantial effect on reading comprehension via lexical inference (\u003cspan class=\"InlineEquation\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"mathinline\"\u003e\\(\\:\\widehat{\\beta\\:}\\)\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e = 0.203, \u003cem\u003ep\u003c/em\u003e\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;0.05, CI [0.077, 0.374]). These indirect pathways suggested that vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference jointly play essential roles in fully mediating the relationship between different aspects of Chinese morphological awareness and reading comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn summary, only compound awareness had significant direct contributions to reading comprehension. Notably, all three Chinese morphological awareness facets including homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness contributed to reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. It was worth noting that lexical inference appeared to play a leading role in connecting morphological awareness and reading comprehension, surpassing the contributions of other mediators. This finding extended the literature of the importance of lexical inference in L2 learners (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab4\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 3\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eStandardized regression weights of final models for Grades 2, 4, and 6\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"6\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"char\" char=\".\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ePaths\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSt. \u003cem\u003eβ\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eS.E.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eC.R.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003ep\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK\u0026larr; CA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.202\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.082\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.031\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.042\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR \u0026larr; CA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.231\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.089\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.337\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.019\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; CA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.253\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.089\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.756\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.006\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 2\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.257\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.090\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.829\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.005\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; CR\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.243\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.096\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.667\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.008\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr; CA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.277\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.087\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.792\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.005\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr; LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.214\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.110\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.168\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.030\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR \u0026larr; HMPA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.477\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.057\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5.646\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK\u0026larr; CR\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.433\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.045\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4.992\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI \u0026larr; CR\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.434\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.044\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5.013\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e(HMPA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr; VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.238\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.093\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.606\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.009\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.226\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.095\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.470\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.013\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR \u0026larr; HMGA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.445\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.270\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5.160\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK \u0026larr; CR\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.433\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.045\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4.992\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e(HMGA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr; VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.240\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.092\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.639\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.008\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; HMGA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.547\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.128\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6.787\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC \u0026larr; LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.227\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.094\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e2.501\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.012\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK\u0026larr; HMPA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.476\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.052\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e6.035\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.410\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.024\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e5.463\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 6\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eRC\u0026larr; LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.328\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.116\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e3.866\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026larr; HMPA\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.793\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.043\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e14.512\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLEXI\u0026larr; CR\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.353\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.020\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e4.702\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e***\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003ctfoot\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"6\"\u003e***p \u0026lt; .001\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"6\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote.\u003c/em\u003e HMPA: homophone awareness, HMGA: homograph awareness, CA: compound awareness, VK: vocabulary knowledge, CR: character recognition, LEXI: lexical inference, RC: reading comprehension\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tfoot\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab5\" border=\"1\"\u003e \u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e95% Confidence intervals (CI) for the indirect paths of final models for Grade 2, 4, and 6\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e \u003c/caption\u003e \u003ccolgroup cols=\"6\"\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003cthead\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndirect Paths\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eSt. \u003cem\u003eβ\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\" nameend=\"c5\" namest=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eBootstrapped 95% CI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eP\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eLower\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eUpper\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/th\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/thead\u003e \u003ctbody\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCA\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.052\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.011\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.116\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.012\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.055\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.004\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.136\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.031\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCA\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.011\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.001\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.036\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.023\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 2\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCA\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.054\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.003\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.151\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.032\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.056\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.016\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.134\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.008\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.052\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.004\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.154\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.028\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.012\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.002\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.045\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.018\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.072\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.013\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.152\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.009\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.054\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.010\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.124\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.009\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.018\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.004\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.043\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.006\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e(HMPA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.071\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.018\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.148\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.001\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.052\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.014\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.099\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.003\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.017\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.003\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.041\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.002\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMGA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;VK\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.311\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.034\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.623\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.013\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 4\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.054\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.010\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.118\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.012\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e(HMGA)\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMGA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.076\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.009\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.211\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.011\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMGA\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.203\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.077\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.374\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.001\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.041\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.012\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.072\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.001\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eVK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.059\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.017\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.132\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.009\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;VK\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.018\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.003\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.040\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.005\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eGrade 6\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.059\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.024\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.108\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.001\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eCR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.043\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.013\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.088\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.002\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003eHMPA\u0026rarr;CR\u0026rarr;LEXI\u0026rarr;RC\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.026\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.007\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.056\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e.002\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/td\u003e \u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tbody\u003e \u003c/colgroup\u003e \u003ctfoot\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"6\"\u003e***p \u0026lt; .001\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd colspan=\"6\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote.\u003c/em\u003e HMPA: homophone awareness, HMGA: homograph awareness, CA: compound awareness, VK: vocabulary knowledge, CR: character recognition, LEXI: lexical inference, RC: reading comprehension\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e \u003c/tfoot\u003e \u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn the current cross-sectional study, we aimed to unpack the potential mechanism through which morphological awareness was associated with reading comprehension among Chinese children in Grades 2, 4, and 6. We examined the mediating roles of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference while controlling for non-verbal intelligence. The study yielded three sets of important findings. First, homophone awareness and homograph awareness did not have direct effects on reading comprehension across all grades, and only compound awareness had a direct contribution to reading comprehension among second graders. Second, morphological awareness facets had significant indirect effects on reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. Third, diverse pathway patterns were observed across grades, from the pattern of compound awareness to reading comprehension in Grade 2 to the pattern of homophone awareness and homograph awareness to reading comprehension in Grades 4 and 6. All patterns highlighted the critical mediating role of lexical inference.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe first research question examined whether different facets of Chinese morphological awareness directly predicted reading comprehension. Theoretically, morphological awareness should be directly related to reading comprehension through its influence on the general comprehension process (Perfetti \u0026amp; Stafura, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e), and Chinese children are no exception in this regard. However, contrary to our expectation, neither homophone awareness nor homograph awareness was a significant direct predictor of reading comprehension across all grade levels. While they were moderately correlated with reading comprehension in the present study\u0026mdash;consistent with prior literature documenting their importance in Chinese reading comprehension (Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e)\u0026mdash;only indirect contribution were identified and solely in the middle and upper grades. Although homophone and homograph awareness are theoretically relevant to Chinese literacy acquisition, they do not appear central to reading comprehension in relatively young children. The absence of significant contributions from homophone and homograph awareness suggests that metalinguistic skills requiring finer phonemic or semantic discrimination at the syllabic or character level exceed the cognitive and linguistic capacities of beginning readers. In addition, we conjectured that the unique effects of homophone awareness and homograph awareness were overshadowed by compound awareness, given the overwhelming prevalence and central importance of compounding in Chinese word formation. The finding that compound awareness directly and indirectly contributed to reading comprehension in second graders resonated with Kim et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e), who reported similar results among Chinese students of the same age. Aligned with previous studies, our research lent support to the conclusion that Chinese children developed different aspects of morphological awareness at different periods and acquired compound knowledge earlier (Ku \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). This early-emerging capacity for word-level morphological analysis is closely tied to the properties of the Chinese language. Notably, over 75% modern Chinese words are two- or three-morpheme compounds (Chen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e), a feature coupled with the generally high productivity of morphemes and the semantic transparency of compounds in Chinese. These linguistic characteristics give lexical compounding rules a distinctively central role in Chinese morphology, which likely facilitates the early development of compound awareness among elementary school students. With well-developed compound awareness, children can effectively decompose and recombine familiar morphemes within multi-character words. This process directly supports character recognition and the derivation of novel word meanings, thereby facilitating text comprehension and laying a crucial foundation for early reading acquisition. Reaching a ceiling effect (Chen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) might explain why compound awareness was not detectable in the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese middle and upper graders. Overall, compound awareness made a unique direct contribution to reading comprehension, far exceeding the contribution of homophone awareness and homograph awareness.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe second research question was whether vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Although a marginally significant connection was found between homograph awareness and vocabulary knowledge, neither parallel mediation effects nor chain mediation effects were significant between homograph awareness and reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 6. In addition, the separate contributions of homophone awareness, homograph awareness, and compound awareness to reading comprehension were fully or partially mediated by the chain effect of vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. This finding was consistent with Zhang (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016b\u003c/span\u003e), who reported the result that morphological awareness contributed to Chinese reading comprehension via full mediation of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference among younger Chinese primary-age children. However, it is worth noting that indirect contributions of both homophone and homograph awareness were identified among older children. As children progress through primary school, they encounter morphologically complex novel characters in both classroom and everyday reading. Furthermore, homophone and homograph awareness represent key components of Chinese morphological awareness, requiring the reader to distinguish specific homophones and homographs at the morpheme (or character) level (Xie, Zhang, Wu, \u0026amp; Nguyen, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Therefore, it is not surprising that awareness of homophone and homograph were initially linked to character recognition. It is striking that homophone and homograph awareness indirectly contributed to reading comprehension in Grade 4. To be specific, both of them initially support character recognition and subsequently facilitate reading comprehension through the mediation of vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference. Thus, we propose that character recognition alone is insufficient for students to identify unfamiliar characters in words and texts. Rather, they require richer word knowledge and compensatory strategies to address the limitations of lower-level character understanding, thereby facilitating the inference and retrieval of lexical meanings, and ultimately supporting the higher-level text comprehension. In contrast to homophone awareness, homograph awareness operated notably through lexical inference alone in the pathway of Grade 4. This pathway suggests that resolving meaning for polysemous characters often necessitates real-time contextual inference, potentially bypassing or supplementing stored vocabulary knowledge. This differentiation underscores that homophone processing is more tightly bound to phonological-orthographic linkage, whereas homograph processing is more reliant on semantic-contextual integration. Thus, we may conclude that children with good morphological awareness and knowledge are able to decompose complex Chinese characters and words into informative parts and use accessible componential information to estimate the meanings of unfamiliar words (Ku \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e), thereby facilitating the retrieval of textual meanings.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn particular, our study demonstrated the importance of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Although homophone awareness and homograph awareness were removed from the preferred model of Grade 2, it was also notable that three aspects of morphological awareness measured in this study significantly affected lexical inference and contributed to reading comprehension through the mediation of lexical inference. As noted earlier, homophone awareness and homograph awareness were relatively weak predictors of reading comprehension among all Chinese primary-age students. Neither form of awareness showed a direct relationship with reading comprehension. Interestingly, lexical inference mediated the indirect relationship, either independently or in conjunction with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, which were initially influenced by homophone awareness or homograph awareness. In the current study, lexical inference referred to the ability of using interword information and intraword clues to derive the meaning of an unknown word (Zhang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). The inferencing process involved various cognitive decisions and was influenced by different contributing factors (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022b\u003c/span\u003e). Successful inferencing was closely related to vocabulary breadth and depth (O\u0026rsquo;Brien, Cook, \u0026amp; Lorch, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e) and inferencing strategies (Nassaji, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e). As a facet of metalinguistic awareness, morphological awareness entailed knowledge about word structure and word meaning (Zhang \u0026amp; Koda, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e), both of which may be activated in facilitating inferencing process (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022b\u003c/span\u003e). This study found that the indirect contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension via lexical inference was statistically significant. To be specific, compound awareness corresponds to morphological awareness at the word level, as opposed to homophone awareness and homograph awareness, which operate at the character level (Han et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Xie et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), all of which were linked to text-level reading comprehension via the key mediation of lexical inference. This result confirmed the intermediary facilitating role of lexical inference in connecting local semantic abstraction and activation with further retrieval of contextual meaning (Zhang et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR48\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). More comprehensively, our finding highlighted the central role of lexical inference in connecting the word identification system and the comprehension system (Perfetti \u0026amp; Stafura, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e). Our finding converged with that of Zhang et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022b\u003c/span\u003e) and extended it to native Chinese learners across elementary grades.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe remaining question was about the different patterns in the association between the three facets of morphological awareness and reading comprehension across primary grades. Compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness have been confirmed as crucial predictors of vocabulary growth among Chinese elementary-age children (Cheng, Li, \u0026amp; Wu, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Consistent with previous studies, our current study obtained results indicating that compound awareness predicted reading comprehension in Grade 2, while homophone awareness and homograph awareness predicted reading comprehension in Grades 4 and 6. It was not surprising that compound awareness was found to have a direct relationship with reading comprehension in early Chinese graders, as it is the most fundamental component in Chinese morphological awareness, referring to the analytical ability of word structure and production (Liu \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e). Our findings aligned with previous empirical evidence indicating that children in Grade 2 begin to develop their Chinese- specific compound awareness (Ku \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e; Chen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) and children in Grades 4 and 6 are capable of morphological analysis (Wysocki \u0026amp; Jenkins, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1987\u003c/span\u003e), which is essential for distinguishing homophones and homographs. In contrast, the direct and indirect relationships of homograph awareness with mediating factors and reading comprehension across grades were not statistically significant in either second or sixth grade. Homograph, as a salient feature of Chinese, was prevalent in young children\u0026rsquo;s early learning activities (Han et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Therefore, homograph awareness may be equally necessary as homophone awareness and compound awareness in establishing the foundation of vocabulary and literacy development. However, our unexpected result regarding the relationship between homograph awareness and reading comprehension among young children was inconsistent with previous studies, such as Han et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), who underscored the important contribution of homograph awareness to vocabulary growth in formal Chinese elementary instruction and home literacy development from an ecological perspective. This inconsistency led to a more complicated picture for the theoretical conceptualization of the multidimensionality of Chinese morphological awareness.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA transitional shift occurred in the pattern of morphological awareness facets associated with reading comprehension between lower and upper grades. Chinese students are introduced to the alphabetic coding system known as Pinyin in Grade 1, which facilitates their initial decoding skills; however, the use of Pinyin becomes less frequent from Grade 2 onwards (Pang \u0026amp; Son, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). The use of Pinyin during the initial stages of learning to read enhances young children\u0026rsquo;s sensitivity to phonological knowledge (Shu, Peng, \u0026amp; McBride-Chang, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e). However, the extensive number of homophones in Chinese poses a great challenge for children in higher grades when recognizing more complex unfamiliar characters and words. Insufficient exposure to phonological knowledge prevents children from making connections between decoding and pronunciation. Consequently, children may derive the meanings of homophones by analyzing internal structure of characters and employing supportive radical awareness (Shu \u0026amp; Anderson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1997\u003c/span\u003e) and semantic clues, which in turn enhance word understanding and ultimately benefit reading comprehension. Homophone is also considered as morpheme awareness, meaning that \u0026ldquo;one syllable may represent different meanings (morphemes)\u0026rdquo; (Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). According to the Lexical Quality Hypothesis, skilled readers, who have higher quality representations of general vocabulary, show quicker homophone confusions than less skilled readers (Perfetti \u0026amp; Hart, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e). Based on our study, the relationship between homophone awareness and reading comprehension did not disappear with grade advancement. One possible interpretation is that homophone awareness and compound awareness focus on different features of language, and this leads to their individual developmental trajectories (Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). Only with sufficient knowledge can children easily identify homophones and activate awareness to recognize morphemes that had identical pronunciation but different meanings. Therefore, homophone awareness holds an advantage among older children (Liu et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). Our study highlighted the strong association of homophone awareness with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, suggesting their cross-grade potential in connecting with lexical inference to facilitate reading comprehension in higher primary school children.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs shown in the final models and discussed above, all Chinese morphological awareness facets established well-defined association with mediators and reading comprehension across all primary grade levels. All of them tended to be important for vocabulary knowledge and character recognition and played slightly different roles in affecting reading comprehension across age groups. Furthermore, lexical inference acted as an indispensable mediator in the indirect effects of all three facets of Chinese morphological awareness on reading comprehension.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec28\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003eLimitations and future directions\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study provided empirical evidence for the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness to reading comprehension for Chinese children in elementary school. Our findings underscored a pattern whereby vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, together with lexical inference, jointly mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. These findings demonstrated the importance of morphological awareness to reading-related outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThere were several limitations of the present study. First, the sample was relatively small and limited. Only children from Grades 2, 4, and 6 participated in the study. Future research should employ a larger sample size across different age levels to validate these findings. Second, we only controlled for the effect of non-verbal intelligence in the identified models. Future studies should consider including additional confounding variables. Third, the cross-sectional nature of the current study limited our ability to trace the developmental relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension as grade levels increased. Collecting longitudinal data over a longer period in future studies will enable us to better estimate the developmental trajectories of morphological awareness and reading outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData Availability\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo data has been shared for this study due to restrictions concerning participant privacy and confidentiality. The Data will be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEthics Statement\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study was granted the ethical approval by the City University of Macau, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Ethics Committee (ref: FHSS250018) on 6 March 2025. This study was conducted in compliance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and other applicable guidelines and regulations concerning research involving human participants.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eInformed Consent\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInformed consent was obtained from all participants, their parents and teachers prior to data collection. The consent process was administered in written form by the contributing author on 13 March 2025 at the target primary school. Participants, along with their parents and teachers, were provided with a detailed consent form outlining the study\u0026rsquo;s purpose, procedures, potential risks, benefits, their voluntary participation, and the right to withdraw. All parties had the opportunity to ask questions before providing consent. Following the process, signed consent forms were collected from all participants and their parents and teachers by the contributing author and have been securely archived in accordance with data protection policies.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCarlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In: L.B. Feldman (ed.), \u003cem\u003eMorphological aspects of language processing \u003c/em\u003e(pp. 189\u0026ndash;209). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203773291\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChen, L., Yao, R. \u0026amp; Zhang, Y. (2025). Morphological awareness and dictation in Chinese children with and without dyslexia: the distinct roles of homophone, homograph, and compounding awareness. \u003cem\u003eRead and Writing\u003c/em\u003e. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-025-10730-z\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChen, X., Hao, M., Geva, E., Zhu, J., \u0026amp; Shu, H. (2009). 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The relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among Chinese children: Evidence from multiple mediation models. \u003cem\u003eLearning and Individual Differences\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e72\u003c/em\u003e, 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2019.04.005\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"morphological awareness, reading comprehension, mediation, vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, lexical inference","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8620769/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8620769/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eThe aim of this study was to investigate the effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension among native Chinese children. The participants consisted of 325 Chinese-speaking students in Grades 2, 4, and 6 from an elementary school in Henan Province, mainland China. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred models for different grade levels, demonstrating the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. The results indicated that only compound awareness directly contributed to reading comprehension in Grade 2. The indirect contribution of compound awareness, homophone awareness, and homograph awareness was mediated by vocabulary knowledge, character recognition, and lexical inference. More importantly, this study highlighted the key role of lexical inference in linking morphological awareness to reading comprehension in Chinese children.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension among Chinese Children: Testing of Cross-grade Paths","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-02-25 16:52:13","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8620769/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-14T07:20:31+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-04-05T10:20:49+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-03-31T03:55:18+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"161796875062470249102925096858598863983","date":"2026-03-30T08:32:50+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"207253578308898262907891770590344191411","date":"2026-03-28T02:16:38+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"41898740978305542333436048874028768930","date":"2026-03-26T09:04:28+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"334218024858710619873594657838365565997","date":"2026-03-06T01:40:57+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2026-02-20T11:26:57+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2026-02-07T10:25:33+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2026-02-04T05:52:17+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2026-02-02T16:41:05+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","date":"2026-02-02T16:32:22+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"1b3293da-332a-451c-9cb4-456e5a567818","owner":[],"postedDate":"February 25th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-05-14T07:20:31+00:00","index":52,"fulltext":""}],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[{"id":63282178,"name":"Humanities/Language and linguistics"},{"id":63282179,"name":"Social science/Language and linguistics"},{"id":63282180,"name":"Biological sciences/Psychology"},{"id":63282181,"name":"Social science/Psychology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-02-25T16:52:13+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-02-25 16:52:13","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8620769","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8620769","identity":"rs-8620769","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}