Reciprocal Predictive Relationships Between Compounding Awareness and the Comprehension of Different Semantically Decomposable Idioms Among Chinese Children.

This study examined the developmental relationship between compounding awareness and three types of idiom comprehension (normally decomposable idioms, abnormally decomposable idioms, and nondecomposable idioms) from grades 3 to 5. After controlling for non-verbal IQ, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and autoregressive effects, it was found that: (1) children's compounding awareness made a significant direct contribution to abnormally decomposable and nondecomposable idioms from grades 3 to 4, and made a significant effect on normally decomposable, abnormally decomposable and nondecomposable idioms from grades 4 to 5; (2) children's nondecomposable and abnormally decomposable idioms comprehension made a unique contribution to compounding awareness from grades 3 to 4 and grades 4 to 5, respectively; (3) there was a bidirectional longitudinal relationship between children's compounding awareness and nondecomposable and abnormally decomposable idioms from grades 3 to 4 and grades 4 to 5, respectively. The results indicated that there were certain differences in the relationship between compounding awareness and three types of idiom comprehension, with their stage characteristics.