Chinese lessons
The didactic concept and the materials were developed at the China Center Tuebingen (author VS). The Chinese lessons took place on eight consecutive days for three hours each; the teacher (author VS) was supported by a native Chinese speaker. The children with and without DD were taught together in small groups. The teachers did not know which of the children had been diagnosed with DD. Characteristics for the Chinese characters taught in class included visual complexity, degree of iconicity, composition and structure, similarity or dissimilarity, familiarity of the meaning and applicability in the lessons as well as phonetics. The stimuli were selected in cooperation with the Department of Linguistics. A total of 37 characters were taught during this period. An important didactic goal was to anchor the characters to be taught both in a context with culture-specific relevance and to embed them in authentic language interactions. The thematic frame of reference was the story of the origin of the Chinese zodiac based on the picture book 