摘要：Models of oral reading in Chinese based on aphasic patients propose that the composition of acharacter’s pronunciation depends only on the lexical-semantic pathway and a non-semantic (direct)pathway (Weekes et al., 1997). Given that pronunciation and tone are not depicted in Chinesecharacters it is debatable whether non-lexical mechanisms are necessary to assemble sub-word unitsfor pronunciation. Weekes and Chen (1999) argued that integrity of semantic memory determinesoral reading accuracy in Chinese aphasia. Interestingly, the question of whether intact reading inhyperlexia requires semantic support has also been discussed (Castles et al., 2010). Here we test thehypothesis that children with hyperlexia in Chinese will be more impaired when reading lowfrequency, low imageability irregular characters that need semantic support.
