Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 27, 2026

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism
Published on: October 3, 2018
Difficulties in Comprehending Affirmative and Negative Sentences: Evidence From Chinese Children With Reading
Shenai Hu1,2,3, Maria Vender2, Gaetano Fiorin2,4
11 Xiamen University, China.
Abstract:
Recent experimental results suggest that negation is particularly challenging for children with reading difficulties. This study looks at how young poor readers, speakers of Mandarin Chinese, comprehend affirmative and negative sentences as compared with a group of age-matched typical readers. Forty-four Chinese children were tested with a truth value judgment task. The results reveal that negative sentences were harder to process than affirmative ones, irrespective of the distinction between poor and typical readers. Moreover, poor readers performed worse than typical readers in comprehending sentences, regardless of whether they were affirmative or negative sentences. We interpret the results as (a) confirming the two-step simulation hypothesis, based on the result that the difficulty in processing negation has a general validity (persisting in pragmatically felicitous contexts), and (b) disconfirming that negation, as far as behavioral data are concerned, can be used as a reliable linguistic predictor of reading difficulties.
Related Concept Videos
Learning Disabilities
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a...
Negative and Cognitive Symptoms of Schizophrenia
Negative Symptoms
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia manifest as deficits in normal emotional and behavioral functioning, profoundly impacting daily life. Individuals with schizophrenia often display a flat affect, characterized by a near-total absence of emotional expression,...
Language Development
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...
Language and Cognition
Social Foundations of Self II: The Generalized Other
Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria and...

