Vocabulary Knowledge and Braille Reading Comprehension in Chinese Students with Blindness: Contributions of Compounding Awareness and Lexical Inferencing

Lexical inferencing is a key contributor to reading development in sighted children, yet its role in Braille reading remains underexplored. This study investigated the developmental trajectory of lexical inferencing among Chinese primary school students with blindness and examined the relationships among compounding awareness, lexical inferencing, vocabulary knowledge, and Braille text reading comprehension. Results showed that (1) students with blindness showed lower lexical inferencing performance than sighted students at both middle and upper grade levels, although lexical inferencing improved with grade level; (2) lexical inferencing significantly predicted both vocabulary knowledge and Braille reading comprehension among students with blindness; (3) compounding awareness significantly predicted lexical inferencing in both middle-grade students and upper-grade students; (4) the relative role of compounding awareness and lexical inferencing differed by grade group. In middle-grade students, both compounding awareness and lexical inferencing contributed to vocabulary knowledge and Braille reading comprehension, with vocabulary knowledge also predicting reading comprehension. In upper-grade students, lexical inferencing remained a significant predictor of both vocabulary knowledge and Braille reading comprehension, whereas compounding awareness no longer directly predicted either outcome. These findings indicate a developmental shift in which compounding awareness is more influential in earlier stages, whereas lexical inferencing becomes the central mechanism supporting vocabulary growth and text-level comprehension in later stages.