Investigation of Elemental Recognitive Abilities Relating to Word Reading in Korean Hangul

—Normal and Poor Readers among Children in Third Grade—

Abstract

In this study, we investigated information processing relating to hangul word reading in normal and poor readers. We tested the ability to read, size of vocabulary, and basic cognitive abilities, including visual processing and phonological processing, of 108 Korean children in third grade. In Korean normal readers, vocabulary, phoneme awareness and naming speed serve as factors for predicting reading scores. The result that vocabulary is the first predictor is as well as that Uno et al. (2009) reported for Kanji in Japanese, however, unlike many studies in Japan, where the focus is on mora awareness, we found evidence that with hangul phoneme awareness is more important than mora awareness. These findings were supported by the properties of Korean script. We found that compared to good readers of Korean, poor readers made more mistakes on a phoneme awareness task, and they requested more time on a RAN test. We suggest that phonological and automatization deficits underlie reading impairment in Korean.