To read and write Chinese require an ability to recognise more than 1,000 basic graphic units. Very few studies have looked into the perceptual learning process of these graphic units at the initial stage when young children are being introduced to the script. Two tasks were developed to tap children‘s understanding of graphic properties of written Chinese. In the name writing task, we investigated whether preschool children, aged 3-5, (1) would differentiate drawing from writing, (2) used a correspondence between character and syllable in their writing, (3) used multiple units within one character or across characters, and (4) respected some of the supra-segmented properties of written Chinese. In the graphic acceptability task, we examined if 5-9 years old children could make orthographic judgements based on positioning and graphic properties of the stroke-patterns. Our results indicated that preschool children could already demonstrate some knowledge of the properties of graphic units in Chinese by using strokes or made-up stroke-patterns in their name writing. Five and six-year-olds rejected words with illegal graphic features and seven- and eight-years-olds distinguished nonwords from pseudowords based on illegal position of stroke-patterns. We conclude that Chinese children implicitly learn graphic properties of the writing System which arc crucial in the learning process, the possibility to shift perceptual learning of graphic properties of written Chinese from implicit learning to explicit teaching deserves further investigation. The aim of this chapter is to analyze children’s developing knowledge of the graphic units that arc related to speech units in Chinese and the difference between what children arc explicitly taught and what they learn implicitly about these graphic units. The term ‘implicit‘ is used here to indicate that both Chinese children and adults are usually unaware of those formal characteristics of their script that are analyzed in this paper

Previous research on the development of children's concept of distributive justice has shed little light on the child's ability to consider the characteristics of the recipients when making judgement of fair sharing. Previous research has shown that preschool children generally apply principles of equality when making decisions for fair sharing of materials, regardless of the characteristics of the recipients. The idea of equality refers to equal sharing of each individual person. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether preschool children would share toys equally across situations or on the basis of the characteristics of the recipients. The study also observed whether each member in a group would be counted as one unit for allocation across situations. A crucial piece of evidence for understanding children's concept of distributive justice is demonstrated by children's ability to view situations differently based on the characteristics of the recipients. These findings serve as a starting point to support the hypothesis that preschool children do take contextual information into account when making distributive justice decisions.
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