Abstract
The MNREAD chart is widely used in scientific research and clinical assessment for English readers. In this study we developed and validated a set of Chinese reading acuity chart using simplified Chinese characters using the similar design principles of MNREAD. 105 simple declarative sentences (subject-verb-object), 12 characters each, were initially selected from 1st- to 3rd-grade textbooks in elementary schools in China. 67 were selected after eliminating those with too many or too few total number of strokes. Reading speeds and errors were estimated with 20 Chinese college students, along with subjective ratings on contents and fluency. 48 sentences were finally selected based on the uniformity in reading speeds and subjective ratings and were used to make 3 reading charts. Each logarithmic chart contained 16 sentences, one sentence per line, covering the acuity range from 20/320 to 20/10 at a 40-cm reading distance. The mean numbers of strokes per sentence for the three charts were 87.2±3.5, 87.4±3.3 and 87.3±3.4. Thirty young, normally-sighted college students were tested with two randomly selected charts and were scored using the MNREAD protocol. They also read two 150-character continuous texts at middle-school level at a 0.7 logMAR print size. The mean reading acuity (rac), critical print size (cps) and maximal reading speed (mrs) were 0.20 logMAR, 0.40 logMAR and 284 char/min, respectively. There were no significant differences in rac, cps and mrs among the 3 charts (p=0.29, 0.63 & 0.82, respectively), and between the readings of two randomly selected charts (p=0.47, 0.34 & 0.23, respectively). The test/retest reliabilities (r/rho) were 0.59, 0.34 and 0.91 for rac, cps and mrs. The maximal reading speed was correlated to that of continuous text (r=0.83, p<0.001). The new Chinese reading acuity charts exhibit the characteristics of an accurate and reliable functional reading assessment instrument.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014