The effect of attention shifting on Chinese children’s word reading in primary school

This study explored the effects of attention shifting on Chinese children’s word reading.

The sample consisted of 87 fourth-grade children from Shaoxing City, China.

The students completed measures of the attention shifting task, reading accuracy test, reading fluency test, and rapid automatized naming test.

The results showed that reading fluency was significantly correlated with attention shifting scores, specifically with tag1 and tag6 (ps < 0.05). The reading accuracy score was also significantly correlated with tag6 (p < 0.05). According to the regression analysis of attention shifting on word reading, even when controlling for rapid automatic naming, attention shifting significantly affected word reading fluency at approximately 600 ms (p = .011). Attention shifting did not affect children’s word reading accuracy.

These findings suggest that attention shifting is significantly associated with children’s word reading. Educators should focus on developing children’s attention shifting to improve their word reading ability.