Name writing in Mandarin-speaking children

Abstract

Name writing plays an important role in early literacy development. Most previous studies of name writing have examined learners of alphabetic writing systems. Analyzing data from two studies with young speakers of Mandarin Chinese, we found that 2-year-olds did not produce names that were recognizable as such. Although 3-year-olds never wrote their names correctly, Chinese adults performed significantly above the level of chance at judging the names as names as opposed to single-character words. Adults were also above chance at judging whether a production was that child’s name as opposed to another child’s name. Some 4-year-olds wrote their names correctly, producing more correct renditions of the characters in their names than of non-name characters. Whereas learners of alphabetic writing systems generally learn to write their names starting with the first letter, the Chinese children were more influenced by the visual properties of a character than by the character’s position in their names.