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Zhang L, Kang L, Chen W, Xie F, Warrington KL. Parafoveal Processing of Orthography, Phonology, and Semantics during Chinese Reading: Effects of Foveal Load. Brain Sci 2024; 14:512. [PMID: 38790490 PMCID: PMC11119660 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14050512] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2024] [Revised: 05/10/2024] [Accepted: 05/17/2024] [Indexed: 05/26/2024] Open
Abstract
The foveal load hypothesis assumes that the ease (or difficulty) of processing the currently fixated word in a sentence can influence processing of the upcoming word(s), such that parafoveal preview is reduced when foveal load is high. Recent investigations using pseudo-character previews reported an absence of foveal load effects in Chinese reading. Substantial Chinese studies to date provide some evidence to show that parafoveal words may be processed orthographically, phonologically, or semantically. However, it has not yet been established whether parafoveal processing is equivalent in terms of the type of parafoveal information extracted (orthographic, phonological, semantic) under different foveal load conditions. Accordingly, the present study investigated this issue with two experiments. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which foveal load was manipulated by placing a low- or high-frequency word N preceding a critical word. The preview validity of the upcoming word N + 1 was manipulated in Experiment 1, and word N + 2 in Experiment 2. The parafoveal preview was either identical to word N + 1(or word N + 2); orthographically related; phonologically related; semantically related; or an unrelated pseudo-character. The results showed robust main effects of frequency and preview type on both N + 1 and N + 2. Crucially, however, interactions between foveal load and preview type were absent, indicating that foveal load does not modulate the types of parafoveal information processed during Chinese reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lei Zhang
- Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng Distract, Jinhua 321004, China; (L.Z.); (L.K.); (W.C.)
- School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng District, Jinhua 321004, China
| | - Liangyue Kang
- Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng Distract, Jinhua 321004, China; (L.Z.); (L.K.); (W.C.)
- School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng District, Jinhua 321004, China
| | - Wanying Chen
- Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng Distract, Jinhua 321004, China; (L.Z.); (L.K.); (W.C.)
- School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng District, Jinhua 321004, China
| | - Fang Xie
- Intelligent Laboratory of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Crisis Intervention of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng Distract, Jinhua 321004, China; (L.Z.); (L.K.); (W.C.)
- School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Wucheng District, Jinhua 321004, China
| | - Kayleigh L. Warrington
- School of Psychology and Vision Sciences, University of Leicester, George Davies Centre, Lancaster Road, Leicester LE1 7HA, UK
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2
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Yan M, Pan J. Joint effects of individual reading skills and word properties on Chinese children's eye movements during sentence reading. Sci Rep 2023; 13:14754. [PMID: 37679436 PMCID: PMC10485247 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-41041-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2023] [Accepted: 08/21/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Word recognition during the reading of continuous text has received much attention. While a large body of research has investigated how linguistic properties of words affect eye movements during reading, it remains to be established how individual differences in reading skills affect momentary cognitive processes during sentence reading among typically developing Chinese readers. The present study set out to test the joint influences of word properties and individual reading skills on eye movements during reading among Chinese children. We recorded eye movements of 30 grade 3 (G3) children and 27 grade 5 (G5) children when they read sentences silently for comprehension. Predictors of linear mixed models included word frequency, visual complexity, and launch site distance, in addition to the participants' offline psychometric performances in rapid naming, morphological awareness, word segmenting, and character recognition. The results showed that word properties affected word recognition during sentence reading in both G3 and G5 children. Moreover, word segmenting predicted the G3 children's fixation durations and the G5 children's fixation location, whereas rapid naming predicted the G5 children's fixation duration. Implications are discussed based on the current findings, in light of how different literacy skills contribute to reading development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ming Yan
- Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China
- Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China
| | - Jinger Pan
- Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong, China.
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3
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Sui L, Dirix N, Woumans E, Duyck W. GECO-CN: Ghent Eye-tracking COrpus of sentence reading for Chinese-English bilinguals. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:2743-2763. [PMID: 35896891 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01931-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 07/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The current work presents the very first eye-tracking corpus of natural reading by Chinese-English bilinguals, whose two languages entail different writing systems and orthographies. Participants read an entire novel in these two languages, presented in paragraphs on screen. Half of the participants first read half of the novel in their native language (Simplified Chinese) and then the rest of the novel in their second language (English), while the other half read in the reverse language order. This article presents some important basic descriptive statistics of reading times and compares the difference between reading in the two languages. However, this unique eye-tracking corpus also allows the exploration of theories of language processing and bilingualism. Importantly, it provides a solid and reliable ground for studying the difference between Eastern and Western languages, understanding the impact and consequences of having a completely different first language on bilingual processing. The materials are freely available for use by researchers interested in (bilingual) reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Longjiao Sui
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium.
| | - Nicolas Dirix
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Evy Woumans
- Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Wouter Duyck
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium
- The Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO), Den Haag, Netherlands
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4
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Huang B, Yang X, Dong S, Gu F. Visual event-related potentials reveal the early whole-word lexical processing of Chinese two-character words. Neuropsychologia 2023; 185:108571. [PMID: 37119984 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108571] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2022] [Revised: 04/25/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2023] [Indexed: 05/01/2023]
Abstract
Morphologically complex words are common across different languages, especially in Chinese, because more than 90% of common modern Chinese words are complex words. Many behavioral studies have suggested the whole-word processing of Chinese complex words, but the neural correlates of whole-word processing remain unclear. Previous electrophysiological studies revealed automatic and early (∼250 ms) access to the orthographic forms of monomorphic words in the ventral occipitotemporal area. In this study, we investigated whether there is also automatic and early orthographic recognition of Chinese complex words (as whole units) by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). A total of 150 two-character words and 150 two-character pseudowords composed of the same 300 characters (morphemes) were pseudorandomly presented to proficient Chinese readers. Participants were required to determine the color of each stimulus in the color decision task and to determine whether each stimulus was a word in the lexical decision task. The two constituent characters of each stimulus were horizontally arranged in Experiment 1 and vertically arranged in Experiment 2. The results revealed a significant early ERP difference between words and pseudowords approximately 250-300 ms after stimulus onset in the parieto-occipital scalp region. The early ERP difference was more prominent in the color decision task than in the lexical decision task, more prominent in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, and more prominent in the left parieto-occipital scalp region than in the right. Source analysis results showed that the early ERP difference originated from the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These results reflected early and automatic access to whole-word orthographic representations of Chinese complex words in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bo Huang
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Xueying Yang
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Shiwei Dong
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China
| | - Feng Gu
- Neurocognitive Laboratory for Linguistics and Semiotics, College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China; Digital Convergence Laboratory of Chinese Cultural Inheritance and Global Communication, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610207, China.
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5
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Luo C, Zhu M, Zhuang X, Ma G. Food word processing in Chinese reading: A study of restrained eaters. Br J Psychol 2023; 114:476-494. [PMID: 36762466 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12638] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2022] [Revised: 01/20/2023] [Accepted: 01/27/2023] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Abstract
Food-related attentional bias refers that individuals typically prioritize rewarding food-related cues (e.g. food words and food images) compared with non-food stimuli; however, the findings are inconsistent for restrained eaters. Traditional paradigms used to test food-related attentional bias, such as visual probe tasks and visual search tasks, may not directly and accurately enough to reflect individuals' food-word processing at different cognitive stages. In this study, we introduced the boundary paradigm to investigate food-word attentional bias for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. Eye movements were recorded when they performed a naturalistic sentence-reading task. The results of later-stage analyses showed that food words were fixated on for less time than non-food words, which indicated a superiority of foveal food-word processing for both restrained and unrestrained eaters. The results of early-stage analyses showed that restrained eaters spent more time on pre-target regions in the food-word valid preview conditions, which indicated a parafoveal food-word processing superiority for restrained eaters (i.e. the parafoveal-on-foveal effect). The superiority of foveal food-word processing provides new insights into explaining food-related attentional bias in general groups. Additionally, the enhanced food-word attentional bias in parafoveal processing for restrained eaters illustrates the importance of individual characteristics in studying word recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Changlin Luo
- Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
| | - Mengyan Zhu
- School of Psychological Science, Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
| | - Xiangling Zhuang
- Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
| | - Guojie Ma
- Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
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6
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Ma X, Liu Y, Clariana R, Gu C, Li P. From eye movements to scanpath networks: A method for studying individual differences in expository text reading. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:730-750. [PMID: 35445941 PMCID: PMC10027820 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01842-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Eye movements have been examined as an index of attention and comprehension during reading in the literature for over 30 years. Although eye-movement measurements are acknowledged as reliable indicators of readers' comprehension skill, few studies have analyzed eye-movement patterns using network science. In this study, we offer a new approach to analyze eye-movement data. Specifically, we recorded visual scanpaths when participants were reading expository science text, and used these to construct scanpath networks that reflect readers' processing of the text. Results showed that low ability and high ability readers' scanpath networks exhibited distinctive properties, which are reflected in different network metrics including density, centrality, small-worldness, transitivity, and global efficiency. Such patterns provide a new way to show how skilled readers, as compared with less skilled readers, process information more efficiently. Implications of our analyses are discussed in light of current theories of reading comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaochuan Ma
- Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, Moore Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
| | - Yikang Liu
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, Millennium Science Complex, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
| | - Roy Clariana
- Department of Learning and Performance Systems, Keller Building, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
| | - Chanyuan Gu
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
| | - Ping Li
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
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7
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The database of eye-movement measures on words in Chinese reading. Sci Data 2022; 9:411. [PMID: 35840575 PMCID: PMC9287311 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01464-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2022] [Accepted: 06/09/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
Eye movements are one of the most fundamental behaviors during reading. A growing number of Chinese reading studies have used eye-tracking techniques in the last two decades. The accumulated data provide a rich resource that can reflect the complex cognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese reading. This article reports a database of eye-movement measures of words during Chinese sentence reading. The database contains nine eye-movement measures of 8,551 Chinese words obtained from 1,718 participants across 57 Chinese sentence reading experiments. All data were collected in the same experimental environment and from homogenous participants, using the same protocols and parameters. This database enables researchers to test their theoretical or computational hypotheses concerning Chinese reading efficiently using a large number of words. The database can also indicate the processing difficulty of Chinese words during text reading, thus providing a way to control or manipulate the difficulty level of Chinese texts.
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8
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Oralova G, Kuperman V. Effects of Spacing on Sentence Reading in Chinese. Front Psychol 2021; 12:765335. [PMID: 34858292 PMCID: PMC8631542 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.765335] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2021] [Accepted: 10/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Given that Chinese writing conventions lack inter-word spacing, understanding whether and how readers of Chinese segment regular unspaced Chinese writing into words is an important question for theories of reading. This study examined the processing outcomes of introducing spaces to written Chinese sentences in varying positions based on native speaker consensus. The measure of consensus for every character transition in our stimuli sentences was the percent of raters who placed a word boundary in that position. The eye movements of native readers of Chinese were recorded while they silently read original unspaced sentences and their experimentally manipulated counterparts for comprehension. We introduced two types of spaced sentences: one with spaces inserted at every probable word boundary (heavily spaced), and another with spaces placed only at highly probable word boundaries (lightly spaced). Linear mixed-effects regression models showed that heavily spaced sentences took identical time to read as unspaced ones despite the shortened fixation times on individual words (Experiment 1). On the other hand, reading times for lightly spaced sentences and words were shorter than those for unspaced ones (Experiment 2). Thus, spaces proved to be advantageous but only when introduced at highly probable word boundaries. We discuss methodological and theoretical implications of these findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gaisha Oralova
- Department of Linguistics and Languages, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
| | - Victor Kuperman
- Department of Linguistics and Languages, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
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9
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Xiong J, Zhang Y, Ju P. The Effects of Orthographic Neighborhood Size and the Influence of Individual Differences in Linguistic Skills During the Recognition of Chinese Words. Front Psychol 2021; 12:727894. [PMID: 34858267 PMCID: PMC8631189 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727894] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2021] [Accepted: 10/19/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
There are still inconsistencies as to whether frequency and orthographic neighborhood size affect the reading and recognition of Chinese words. In addition, research on Chinese reading still adheres to the view that "all skilled readers read in the same way" and pays little attention to the influence of individual differences in linguistic skills on word recognition. In this research, we studied the recognition of Chinese two-character words in a lexical decision task (LDT) by manipulating neighborhood size and word frequency and controlling the frequency of the initial constituent character. Individual differences in linguistic skills were assessed through tests of spelling and reading comprehension. The results showed that: (1) A larger orthographic neighborhood size of the initial character had a facilitative effect on Chinese word recognition. The orthographic neighborhood size effect is modulated by word frequency, but this modulation effect was not stable. (2) Spelling and reading comprehension skills are good indicators to assess individual differences in Chinese linguistic skills, and they are significantly correlated. (3) Individual differences in linguistic skills influence the neighborhood size effect, which is moderated by word frequency.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jianping Xiong
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
| | - Yujie Zhang
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
| | - Ping Ju
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
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10
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The Beijing Sentence Corpus: A Chinese sentence corpus with eye movement data and predictability norms. Behav Res Methods 2021; 54:1989-2000. [PMID: 34816386 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01730-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
This report introduces the Beijing Sentence Corpus (BSC). This is a Chinese sentence corpus of eye-tracking data with relatively clear word boundaries. In addition, we report predictability norms for each word in the corpus. Eye movement corpora are available in alphabetic scripts such as English, German, and French. However, there is no publicly available corpus for Chinese. Thus, to study predictive processes during reading in Chinese, it is necessary to establish such a corpus. Also, given the clear word boundaries in the sentences, BSC is especially useful to provide evidence relevant to the theoretical debate of saccade target selection in Chinese. With the large-scale predictability norms, we conducted new analyses based on 60 BSC readers, testing the influences of launch word and target word properties while controlling for visual and oculomotor constraints, as well as sentence and subject-level individual differences. We discuss implications for guidance of eye movements in Chinese reading.
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11
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Coronel JC, Bullock OM, Shulman HC, Sweitzer MD, Bond RM, Poulsen S. Eye Movements Predict Large-Scale Voting Decisions. Psychol Sci 2021; 32:836-848. [PMID: 34032476 DOI: 10.1177/0956797621991142] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
More than 100 countries allow people to vote directly on policies in direct democracy elections (e.g., 2016 Brexit referendum). Politicians are often responsible for writing ballot language, and voters frequently encounter ballot measures that are difficult to understand. We examined whether eye movements from a small group of individuals can predict the consequences of ballot language on large-scale voting decisions. Across two preregistered studies (Study 1: N = 120 registered voters, Study 2: N = 120 registered voters), we monitored laboratory participants' eye movements as they read real ballot measures. We found that eye-movement responses associated with difficulties in language comprehension predicted aggregate voting decisions to abstain from voting and vote against ballot measures in U.S. elections (total number of votes cast = 137,661,232). Eye movements predicted voting decisions beyond what was accounted for by widely used measures of language difficulty. This finding demonstrates a new way of linking eye movements to out-of-sample aggregate-level behaviors.
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12
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Zhang G, Yuan B, Hua H, Lou Y, Lin N, Li X. Individual differences in first-pass fixation duration in reading are related to resting-state functional connectivity. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2021; 213:104893. [PMID: 33360162 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104893] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/29/2020] [Revised: 12/04/2020] [Accepted: 12/06/2020] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Although there are considerable individual differences in eye movements during text reading, their neural correlates remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the first-pass fixation duration (FPFD) in natural reading and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in the brain. We defined the brain regions associated with early visual processing, word identification, attention shifts, and oculomotor control as seed regions. The results showed that individual FPFDs were positively correlated with individual RSFCs between the early visual network, visual word form area, and eye movement control/dorsal attention network. Our findings provide new evidence on the neural correlates of eye movements in text reading and indicate that individual differences in fixation time may shape the RSFC differences in the brain through the time-on-task effect and the mechanism of Hebbian learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guangyao Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Binke Yuan
- Center for Language and Brain, Shenzhen Institute of Neuroscience, Shenzhen, China
| | - Huimin Hua
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Ya Lou
- Beijing Institute of Education, Beijing, China
| | - Nan Lin
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
| | - Xingshan Li
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
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13
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Chen M, Wang Y, Zhao B, Li X, Bai X. The Trade-Off Between Format Familiarity and Word-Segmentation Facilitation in Chinese Reading. Front Psychol 2021; 12:602931. [PMID: 33584472 PMCID: PMC7876460 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.602931] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/04/2020] [Accepted: 01/06/2021] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
In alphabetic writing systems (such as English), the spaces between words mark the word boundaries, and the basic unit of reading is distinguished during visual-level processing. The visual-level information of word boundaries facilitates reading. Chinese is an ideographic language whose text contains no intrinsic inter-word spaces as the marker of word boundaries. Previous studies have shown that the basic processing unit of Chinese reading is also a word. However, findings remain inconsistent regarding whether inserting spaces between words in Chinese text promotes reading performance. Researchers have proposed that there may be a trade-off between format familiarity and the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces. In order to verify this, this study manipulated the format familiarity via reversing the Chinese reading direction from right to left to investigate this issue in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether inter-word spaces facilitated Chinese reading in an unfamiliar format. Experiment 1 was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates read Chinese sentences from right to left on four format conditions. The results showed faster reading speed and shorter total reading time for the inter-word spaced format. Based on this finding, Experiment 2 examined whether the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces would reduce or disappear after improving the format familiarity; this experiment was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates who did not participate in Experiment 1 read Chinese sentences from right to left on four format conditions after ten-day reading training. There was no significant difference between the total reading time and reading speed in the inter-word spaced format and unspaced format, which suggests that the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces in Chinese reading changed smaller. The combined results of the two experiments suggest that there is indeed a trade-off between format familiarity and the facilitation of word segmentation, which supports the assumption of previous studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mingjing Chen
- Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Yongsheng Wang
- Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Bingjie Zhao
- Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Xin Li
- Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Xuejun Bai
- Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
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14
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He L, Song Z, Chang M, Zang C, Yan G, Liversedge SP. Contrasting off-line segmentation decisions with on-line word segmentation during reading. Br J Psychol 2021; 112:662-689. [PMID: 33469949 PMCID: PMC8611802 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12482] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2020] [Revised: 11/09/2020] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
In two experiments, we investigated the correspondences between off-line word segmentation and on-line segmentation processing during Chinese reading. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to read sentences which contained critical four-character strings, and then, they were required to segment the same sentences into words in a later off-line word segmentation task. For each item, participants were split into 1-word segmenters (who segmented four-character strings as a single word) and 2-word segmenters (who segmented four-character strings as 2 two-character words). Thus, we split participants into two groups (1-word segmenters and 2-word segmenters) according to their off-line segmentation bias. The data analysis showed no reliable group effect on all the measures. In order to avoid the heterogeneity of participants and stimuli in Experiment 1, two groups of participants (1-word segmenters and 2-word segmenters) and three types of critical four-character string (1-word strings, ambiguous strings, and 2-word strings) were identified in a norming study in Experiment 2. Participants were required to read sentences containing these critical strings. There was no reliable group effect in Experiment 2, as was the case in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2, participants spent less time and made fewer fixations on 1-word strings compared to ambiguous and 2-word strings. These results indicate that the off-line word segmentation preferences do not necessarily reflect on-line word segmentation processing during Chinese reading and that Chinese readers exhibit flexibility such that word, or multiple constituent, segmentation commitments are made on-line.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liyuan He
- Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | | | - Min Chang
- Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Chuanli Zang
- Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.,University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
| | - Guoli Yan
- Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
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15
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Cui L, Wang J, Zhang Y, Cong F, Zhang W, Hyönä J. Compound word frequency modifies the effect of character frequency in reading Chinese. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2020; 74:610-633. [PMID: 33118461 PMCID: PMC8044629 DOI: 10.1177/1747021820973661] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
In two eye-tracking studies, reading of two-character Chinese compound words was examined. First and second character frequency were orthogonally manipulated to examine the extent to which Chinese compound words are processed via the component characters. In Experiment 1, first and second character frequency were manipulated for frequent compound words, whereas in Experiment 2 it was done for infrequent compound words. Fixation time and skipping probability for the first and second character were affected by its frequency in neither experiment, nor in their pooled analysis. Yet, in Experiment 2 fixations on the second character were longer when a high-frequency character was presented as the first character compared with when a low-frequency character was presented as the first character. This reversed character frequency effect reflects a morphological family size effect and is explained by the constraint hypothesis, according to which fixation time on the second component of two-component compound words is shorter when its identity is constrained by the first component. It is concluded that frequent Chinese compound words are processed holistically, whereas with infrequent compound words there is some room for the characters to play a role in the identification process.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lei Cui
- Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Jue Wang
- Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Yingliang Zhang
- Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Fengjiao Cong
- Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Wenxin Zhang
- Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
| | - Jukka Hyönä
- Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.,Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia
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16
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Zhao S, Li L, Chang M, Wang J, Paterson KB. A further look at ageing and word predictability effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from one-character words. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2020; 74:68-76. [PMID: 32749198 PMCID: PMC7745612 DOI: 10.1177/1747021820951131] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Older adults are thought to compensate for slower lexical processing by making greater use of contextual knowledge, relative to young adults, to predict words in sentences. Accordingly, compared to young adults, older adults should produce larger contextual predictability effects in reading times and skipping rates for words. Empirical support for this account is nevertheless scarce. Perhaps the clearest evidence to date comes from a recent Chinese study showing larger word predictability effects for older adults in reading times but not skipping rates for two-character words. However, one possibility is that the absence of a word-skipping effect in this experiment was due to the older readers skipping words infrequently because of difficulty processing two-character words parafoveally. We therefore took a further look at this issue, using one-character target words to boost word-skipping. Young (18–30 years) and older (65+ years) adults read sentences containing a target word that was either highly predictable or less predictable from the prior sentence context. Our results replicate the finding that older adults produce larger word predictability effects in reading times but not word-skipping, despite high skipping rates. We discuss these findings in relation to ageing effects on reading in different writing systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sainan Zhao
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Lin Li
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Min Chang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Jingxin Wang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Kevin B Paterson
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavior, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
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17
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Zhang Z, Warren CM, Lei Y, Xing Q, Li H. Stimulus complexity and chunk tightness interact to impede perceptual restructuring during problem solving. Biol Psychol 2020; 155:107930. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107930] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/19/2019] [Revised: 07/01/2020] [Accepted: 07/13/2020] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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18
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Liu Z, Liu X, Tong W, Fu F. Word's Contextual Predictability and Its Character Frequency Effects in Chinese Reading: Evidence From Eye Movements. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1833. [PMID: 32982821 PMCID: PMC7480120 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01833] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2019] [Accepted: 07/03/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study sought to establish how a word's contextual predictability impacts the early stages of word processing when reading Chinese. Two eye-movement experiments were conducted in which the predictability of the target two-character word was manipulated; the frequency of the target's initial character was manipulated in Experiment 1, as was the target's end character frequency in Experiment 2. No reliable interaction effect of predictability with initial character frequency was observed in Experiment 1. Reliable interactions of word predictability with end character frequency were observed in Experiment 2. The end character frequency effects, in which the words with high-frequency end characters were fixated for a shorter time and re-fixated less often, were only observed when reading unpredictable words. Reliable interactions were also observed with incoming saccade length, as high-frequency end character words elicited longer saccades to themselves than low-frequency end character words when reading predictable words. The effects of pervasive predictability on measures of fixation time, probability, and saccade length were noted in both experiments. Our findings suggest that a word's contextual predictability facilitates the processing of its constituent characters.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhifang Liu
- Department of Psychology, College of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Xuanwen Liu
- Department of Psychology, College of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Wen Tong
- Department of Psychology, College of Education, Shaanxi Normal University, Linfen, China
| | - Fuyin Fu
- Department of Psychology, College of Education, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
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19
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Huang L, Li X. Early, but not overwhelming: The effect of prior context on segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings when reading Chinese. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2020; 73:1382-1395. [PMID: 32345127 DOI: 10.1177/1747021820926012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
The current study investigated how the prior context influences word segmentation of overlapping ambiguous strings when reading Chinese. Chinese readers' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing a three-character overlapping ambiguous string (ABC), where both AB and BC were two-character words. In the informative condition, prior contexts provided syntactic information that supported either the first word segmentation (AB-C) or the second word segmentation (A-BC). The neutral condition did not provide syntactic constraint for word-segmentation. The post-target contexts were syntactically consistent with either the first word (AB-C) or the second word (A-BC) segmentation. The results showed that there were higher skipping rates and shorter first-fixation durations on the overlapping ambiguous string region in the informative AB-C condition than those in the informative A-BC condition, whereas no difference between the AB-C and A-BC segmentation types was found in the neutral condition. Readers still made regressions into the overlapping ambiguous string region in the informative condition. These results imply that readers use sentence context information immediately to segment the overlapping ambiguous words, but they do not use the context information fully. The first word (AB) has processing advantages over the second word (BC), suggesting a left-side word advantage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linjieqiong Huang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Xingshan Li
- CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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20
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Bianchi B, Bengolea Monzón G, Ferrer L, Fernández Slezak D, Shalom DE, Kamienkowski JE. Human and computer estimations of Predictability of words in written language. Sci Rep 2020; 10:4396. [PMID: 32157161 PMCID: PMC7064512 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-61353-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/03/2019] [Accepted: 02/24/2020] [Indexed: 01/14/2023] Open
Abstract
When we read printed text, we are continuously predicting upcoming words to integrate information and guide future eye movements. Thus, the Predictability of a given word has become one of the most important variables when explaining human behaviour and information processing during reading. In parallel, the Natural Language Processing (NLP) field evolved by developing a wide variety of applications. Here, we show that using different word embeddings techniques (like Latent Semantic Analysis, Word2Vec, and FastText) and N-gram-based language models we were able to estimate how humans predict words (cloze-task Predictability) and how to better understand eye movements in long Spanish texts. Both types of models partially captured aspects of predictability. On the one hand, our N-gram model performed well when added as a replacement for the cloze-task Predictability of the fixated word. On the other hand, word embeddings were useful to mimic Predictability of the following word. Our study joins efforts from neurolinguistic and NLP fields to understand human information processing during reading to potentially improve NLP algorithms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bruno Bianchi
- Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Técnica, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
| | - Gastón Bengolea Monzón
- Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Técnica, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Luciana Ferrer
- Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Técnica, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Diego Fernández Slezak
- Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Técnica, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.,Departamento de Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Diego E Shalom
- Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Juan E Kamienkowski
- Laboratorio de Inteligencia Artificial Aplicada, Instituto de Ciencias de la Computación, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires - Consejo Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Técnica, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.,Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
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21
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Paterson KB, McGowan VA, Warrington KL, Li L, Li S, Xie F, Chang M, Zhao S, Pagán A, White SJ, Wang J. Effects of Normative Aging on Eye Movements during Reading. Vision (Basel) 2020; 4:vision4010007. [PMID: 31947552 PMCID: PMC7157620 DOI: 10.3390/vision4010007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2019] [Revised: 01/06/2020] [Accepted: 01/07/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Substantial progress has been made in understanding the mostly detrimental effects of normative aging on eye movements during reading. This article provides a review of research on aging effects on eye movements during reading for different writing systems (i.e., alphabetic systems like English compared to non-alphabetic systems like Chinese), focused on appraising the importance of visual and cognitive factors, considering key methodological issues, and identifying vital questions that need to be addressed and topics for further investigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kevin B. Paterson
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; (V.A.M.); (K.L.W.); (A.P.); (S.J.W.)
- Correspondence:
| | - Victoria A. McGowan
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; (V.A.M.); (K.L.W.); (A.P.); (S.J.W.)
| | - Kayleigh L. Warrington
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; (V.A.M.); (K.L.W.); (A.P.); (S.J.W.)
| | - Lin Li
- Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; (L.L.); (F.X.); (M.C.); (S.Z.); (J.W.)
| | - Sha Li
- School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China;
| | - Fang Xie
- Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; (L.L.); (F.X.); (M.C.); (S.Z.); (J.W.)
| | - Min Chang
- Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; (L.L.); (F.X.); (M.C.); (S.Z.); (J.W.)
| | - Sainan Zhao
- Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; (L.L.); (F.X.); (M.C.); (S.Z.); (J.W.)
| | - Ascensión Pagán
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; (V.A.M.); (K.L.W.); (A.P.); (S.J.W.)
| | - Sarah J. White
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; (V.A.M.); (K.L.W.); (A.P.); (S.J.W.)
| | - Jingxin Wang
- Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; (L.L.); (F.X.); (M.C.); (S.Z.); (J.W.)
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22
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Predictability impacts word and character processing in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements. ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA SINICA 2020. [DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1041.2020.01031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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23
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Li L, Li S, Xie F, Chang M, McGowan VA, Wang J, Paterson KB. Establishing a role for the visual complexity of linguistic stimuli in age-related reading difficulty: Evidence from eye movements during Chinese reading. Atten Percept Psychophys 2019; 81:2626-2634. [PMID: 31410763 PMCID: PMC6856292 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01836-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/03/2022]
Abstract
Older adults experience greater difficulty compared to young adults during both alphabetic and nonalphabetic reading. However, while this age-related reading difficulty may be attributable to visual and cognitive declines in older adulthood, the underlying causes remain unclear. With the present research, we focused on effects related to the visual complexity of written language. Chinese is ideally suited to investigating such effects, as characters in this logographic writing system can vary substantially in complexity (in terms of their number of strokes, i.e., lines and dashes) while always occupying the same square area of space, so that this complexity is not confounded with word length. Nonreading studies suggests older adults have greater difficulty than young adults when recognizing characters with high compared to low numbers of strokes. The present research used measures of eye movements to investigate adult age differences in these effects during natural reading. Young adult (18-28 years) and older adult (65+ years) participants read sentences that included one of a pair of two-character target words matched for lexical frequency and contextual predictability, but composed of either high-complexity (>9 strokes) or low-complexity (≤7 strokes) characters. Typical patterns of age-related reading difficulty were observed. However, an effect of visual complexity in reading times for words was greater for the older than for the younger adults, due to the older readers experiencing greater difficulty identifying words containing many rather than few strokes. We interpret these findings in terms of the influence of subtle deficits in visual abilities on reading capabilities in older adulthood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lin Li
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China
| | - Sha Li
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China
- Department of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China
| | - Fang Xie
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China
| | - Min Chang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China
| | - Victoria A McGowan
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, George Davies Centre, University Road, Leicester, LE1 9HN, UK
| | - Jingxin Wang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China.
| | - Kevin B Paterson
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, George Davies Centre, University Road, Leicester, LE1 9HN, UK.
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24
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Albrengues C, Lavigne F, Aguilar C, Castet E, Vitu F. Linguistic processes do not beat visuo-motor constraints, but they modulate where the eyes move regardless of word boundaries: Evidence against top-down word-based eye-movement control during reading. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0219666. [PMID: 31329614 PMCID: PMC6645505 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0219666] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2018] [Accepted: 06/29/2019] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Where readers move their eyes, while proceeding forward along lines of text, has long been assumed to be determined in a top-down word-based manner. According to this classical view, readers of alphabetic languages would invariably program their saccades towards the center of peripheral target words, as selected based on the (expected) needs of ongoing (word-identification) processing, and the variability in within-word landing positions would exclusively result from systematic and random errors. Here we put this predominant hypothesis to a strong test by estimating the respective influences of language-related variables (word frequency and word predictability) and lower-level visuo-motor factors (word length and saccadic launch-site distance to the beginning of words) on both word-skipping likelihood and within-word landing positions. Our eye-movement data were collected while forty participants read 316 pairs of sentences, that differed only by one word, the prime; this was either semantically related or unrelated to a following test word of variable frequency and length. We found that low-level visuo-motor variables largely predominated in determining which word would be fixated next, and where in a word the eye would land. In comparison, language-related variables only had tiny influences. Yet, linguistic variables affected both the likelihood of word skipping and within-word initial landing positions, all depending on the words’ length and how far on average the eye landed from the word boundaries, but pending the word could benefit from peripheral preview. These findings provide a strong case against the predominant word-based account of eye-movement guidance during reading, by showing that saccades are primarily driven by low-level visuo-motor processes, regardless of word boundaries, while being overall subject to subtle, one-off, language-based modulations. Our results also suggest that overall distributions of saccades’ landing positions, instead of truncated within-word landing-site distributions, should be used for a better understanding of eye-movement guidance during reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Claire Albrengues
- Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, BCL (Bases, Corpus, Langage), Nice, France
| | - Frédéric Lavigne
- Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, BCL (Bases, Corpus, Langage), Nice, France
| | | | - Eric Castet
- Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, LPC (Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive), Fédération de Recherche 3C, Marseille, France
| | - Françoise Vitu
- Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, LPC (Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive), Fédération de Recherche 3C, Marseille, France
- * E-mail:
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25
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Wang J, Li L, Li S, Xie F, Chang M, Paterson KB, White SJ, McGowan VA. Adult Age Differences in Eye Movements During Reading: The Evidence From Chinese. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 2019; 73:584-593. [PMID: 27032427 PMCID: PMC6019021 DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbw036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2015] [Accepted: 03/09/2016] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Objectives Substantial evidence indicates that older readers of alphabetic languages (e.g., English and German) compensate for age-related reading difficulty by employing a more risky reading strategy in which words are skipped more frequently. The effects of healthy aging on reading behavior for nonalphabetic languages, like Chinese, are largely unknown, although this would reveal the extent to which age-related changes in reading strategy are universal. Accordingly, the present research used measures of eye movements to investigate adult age differences in Chinese reading. Method The eye movements of young (18-30 years) and older (60+ years) Chinese readers were recorded. Results The older adults exhibited typical patterns of age-related reading difficulty. But rather than employing a more risky reading strategy compared with the younger readers, the older adults read more carefully by skipping words infrequently, making shorter forward eye movements, and fixating closer to the beginnings of two-character target words in sentences. Discussion In contrast with the findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to compensate for age-related reading difficulty by employing a more careful reading strategy. Age-related changes in reading strategy therefore appear to be language specific, rather than universal, and may reflect the specific visual and linguistic requirements of the writing system.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jingxin Wang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Lin Li
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Sha Li
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Fang Xie
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Min Chang
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
| | - Kevin B Paterson
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
| | - Sarah J White
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
| | - Victoria A McGowan
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
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26
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Aging and Pattern Complexity Effects on the Visual Span: Evidence from Chinese Character Recognition. Vision (Basel) 2019; 3:vision3010011. [PMID: 31735812 PMCID: PMC6802760 DOI: 10.3390/vision3010011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/23/2019] [Revised: 03/16/2019] [Accepted: 03/18/2019] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Research suggests that pattern complexity (number of strokes) limits the visual span for Chinese characters, and that this may have important consequences for reading. With the present research, we investigated age differences in the visual span for Chinese characters by presenting trigrams of low, medium or high complexity at various locations relative to a central point to young (18–30 years) and older (60+ years) adults. A sentence reading task was used to assess their reading speed. The results showed that span size was smaller for high complexity stimuli compared to low and medium complexity stimuli for both age groups, replicating previous findings with young adult participants. Our results additionally showed that this influence of pattern complexity was greater for the older than younger adults, such that while there was little age difference in span size for low and medium complexity stimuli, span size for high complexity stimuli was almost halved in size for the older compared to the young adults. Finally, our results showed that span size correlated with sentence reading speed, confirming previous findings taken as evidence that the visual span imposes perceptual limits on reading speed. We discuss these findings in relation to age-related difficulty reading Chinese.
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27
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中央凹加工负荷与副中央凹信息在汉语阅读眼跳目标选择中的作用. ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA SINICA 2018. [DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1041.2018.01336] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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28
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Ma G, Li Z, Xu F, Li X. The modulation of eye movement control by word length in reading Chinese. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 72:1620-1631. [PMID: 30146970 DOI: 10.1177/1747021818799994] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Given there are no interword spaces marking word boundaries in Chinese text, it remains unclear how information about word length influences eye movement control during the reading of Chinese text. In this research, we set up strict controls for word frequency and other word properties, to study this knowledge gap. In Experiment 1A and Experiment 1B, a between-subjects design was used. Forty-eight pairs of one- and two-character words were selected as target words in Experiment 1A, while the same amount of two- and three-character words were selected in Experiment 1B. Conversely, a within-subjects design was used in Experiment 2. Sixty sets of one-, two- and three-character words were selected as target words. The results showed that long words were skipped less often and fixated on more often than short words. Total time was shorter for shorter than for longer words but first fixation durations were longer for one- than for two-character words. Most importantly, we did not find reliable evidence to support the view that word length could modulate initial landing position and incoming saccade length in the length-matched region analyses. These findings suggest that word length influences eye movement control during reading Chinese in a way that is slightly different from that in the process of reading English.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guojie Ma
- 1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
| | - Ziang Li
- 1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
| | - Fengfeng Xu
- 1 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
| | - Xingshan Li
- 2 Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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Do alternating-color words facilitate reading aloud text in Chinese? Evidence with developing and adult readers. Mem Cognit 2018; 45:1160-1170. [PMID: 28608193 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-017-0717-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Prior research has shown that colors induce perceptual grouping and, hence, colors can be used as word dividers during reading (Pinna & Deiana, 2014). This issue is particularly important for those writing systems that do not employ interword spaces (e.g., Chinese). The rationale is that alternating colors across words in these scripts may facilitate the process of word identification without altering the spatial distribution of text. Here, we tested whether color alternation across words produces a benefit in a reading-aloud task in native speakers of Chinese. Participants had to read two texts: one with color alternation across words and the other with mono-color words. Experiments 1 and 2 were conducted with adult readers, whereas Experiment 3 was conducted with developing readers (Grade 2 children). Results showed that color information facilitated reading aloud a text for adult readers-restricted to texts containing technical, unfamiliar words (Experiment 2)-and developing readers. We examined the implications of these findings in the context of literacy and vocabulary training.
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Liu Y, Yu L, Reichle ED. The dynamic adjustment of saccades during Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements and simulations. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 2018; 45:535-543. [PMID: 29985033 DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000595] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
This article reports an eye-movement experiment in which participants scanned continuous sequences of Landolt-Cs for target circles to examine the visual and oculomotor constraints that might jointly determine where the eyes move in a task that engages many of the perceptual and motor processes involved in Chinese reading but without lexical or linguistic processing. The lengths of the saccades entering the Landolt-C clusters were modulated by the processing difficulty (i.e., gap sizes) of those clusters. Simulations using implemented versions of default-targeting (Yan, Kliegl, Richter, Nuthmann, & Shu, 2010) versus dynamic-adjustment (Liu, Reichle, & Li, 2016) models of saccadic targeting indicated that the latter provided a better account of our participants' eye movements, further supporting the hypothesis that Chinese readers "decide" where to move their eyes by adjusting saccade length in response to processing difficulty rather than by selecting default saccade targets. We discuss this hypothesis in relation to both what is known about saccadic targeting during the reading of English versus Chinese and current models of eye-movement control in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Abstract
This article introduces a new corpus of eye movements in silent reading-the Russian Sentence Corpus (RSC). Russian uses the Cyrillic script, which has not yet been investigated in cross-linguistic eye movement research. As in every language studied so far, we confirmed the expected effects of low-level parameters, such as word length, frequency, and predictability, on the eye movements of skilled Russian readers. These findings allow us to add Slavic languages using Cyrillic script (exemplified by Russian) to the growing number of languages with different orthographies, ranging from the Roman-based European languages to logographic Asian ones, whose basic eye movement benchmarks conform to the universal comparative science of reading (Share, 2008). We additionally report basic descriptive corpus statistics and three exploratory investigations of the effects of Russian morphology on the basic eye movement measures, which illustrate the kinds of questions that researchers can answer using the RSC. The annotated corpus is freely available from its project page at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/x5q2r/ .
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Abstract
A music reader has to “look ahead” from the notes currently being played—this has usually
been called the Eye-Hand Span. Given the restrictions on processing time due to tempo and
meter, the Early Attraction Hypothesis suggests that sight readers are likely to locally increase
the span of looking ahead in the face of complex upcoming symbols (or symbol relationships).
We argue that such stimulus-driven effects on looking ahead are best studied
using a measure of Eye-Time Span (ETS) which redefines looking ahead as the metrical
distance between the position of a fixation in the score and another position that corresponds
to the point of metrical time at fixation onset. In two experiments of temporally controlled
sight reading, musicians read simple stepwise melodies that were interspersed with larger
intervallic skips, supposed to create points of higher melodic complexity (and visual salience)
at the notes following the skips. The results support both Early Attraction (lengthening
of looking ahead) and Distant Attraction (lengthening of incoming saccades) in the face of
relative melodic complexity. Notably, such effects also occurred on the notes preceding the
nominally complex ones. The results suggest that saccadic control in music reading depends
on temporal restrictions as well as on local variations in stimulus complexity.
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Abstract
Previous eye-movement studies have indicated that people tend to skip extremely high-frequency words in sentence reading, such as "the" in English and "/de" in Chinese. Two alternative hypotheses have been proposed to explain how this frequent skipping happens in Chinese reading: one assumes that skipping happens when the preview has been fully identified at the word level (word-based skipping); the other assumes that skipping happens whenever the preview character is easy to identify regardless of whether lexical processing has been completed or not (character-based skipping). Using the gaze-contingent display change paradigm, we examined the two hypotheses by substituting the preview of the third character of a four-character Chinese word with the high-frequency Chinese character "/de", which should disrupt the ongoing word-level processing. The character-based skipping hypothesis predicts that this manipulation will enhance the skipping probability of the target character (i.e., the third character of the target word), because the character "/de" has much higher character frequency than the original character. The word-based skipping hypothesis instead predicts a reduction of the skipping probability of the target character because the presence of the character "/de" is lexically infelicitous at word level. The results supported the character-based skipping hypothesis, indicating that in Chinese reading the decision of skipping a character can be made before integrating it into a word.
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Chinese versus English: Insights on Cognition during Reading. Trends Cogn Sci 2017; 21:721-724. [PMID: 28676283 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.06.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/02/2017] [Revised: 06/02/2017] [Accepted: 06/09/2017] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
Chinese reading experiments have introduced important caveats to theories of reading that have been largely informed by studies of English reading - especially in relation to our understanding of lexical processing and eye-movement control. This article provides a brief primer on Chinese reading and examples of questions that arise from its study.
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The effect of character contextual diversity on eye movements in Chinese sentence reading. Psychon Bull Rev 2017; 24:1971-1979. [PMID: 28361436 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-017-1278-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Chen, Huang, et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2017) found that when reading two-character Chinese words embedded in sentence contexts, contextual diversity (CD), a measure of the proportion of texts in which a word appears, affected fixation times to words. When CD is controlled, however, frequency did not affect reading times. Two experiments used the same experimental designs to examine whether there are frequency effects of the first character of two-character words when CD is controlled. In Experiment 1, yoked triples of characters from a control group, a group matched for character CD that is lower in frequency, and a group matched in frequency with the control group, but higher in character CD, were rotated through the same sentence frame. In Experiment 2 each character from a larger set was embedded in a separate sentence frame, allowing for a larger difference in log frequency compared to Experiment 1 (0.8 and 0.4, respectively). In both experiments, early and later eye movement measures were significantly shorter for characters with higher CD than for characters with lower CD, with no effects of character frequency. These results place constraints on models of visual word recognition and suggest ways in which Chinese can be used to tease apart the nature of context effects in word recognition and language processing in general.
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Liu Y, Huang R, Gao D, Reichle ED. Further Tests of a Dynamic-Adjustment Account of Saccade Targeting During the Reading of Chinese. Cogn Sci 2017; 41 Suppl 6:1264-1287. [PMID: 28295571 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2016] [Revised: 12/05/2016] [Accepted: 01/11/2017] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
There are two accounts of how readers of unspaced writing systems (e.g., Chinese) know where to move their eyes: (a) saccades are directed toward default targets (e.g., centers of words that have been segmented in the parafovea); or (b) saccade lengths are adjusted dynamically, as a function of ongoing parafoveal processing. This article reports an eye-movement experiment supporting the latter hypothesis by demonstrating that the slope of the relationship between the saccade launch site on word N and the subsequent fixation landing site on word N + 1 is > 1, suggesting that saccades are lengthened from launch sites that afford more parafoveal processing. This conclusion is then evaluated and confirmed via simulations using implementations of both hypotheses (Liu, Reichle, & Li, 2016), with a discussion of these results for our understanding of saccadic targeting during reading and existing models of eye-movement control.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanping Liu
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University
| | - Ren Huang
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University
| | - Dingguo Gao
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University
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Liu Y, Huang R, Li Y, Gao D. The Word Frequency Effect on Saccade Targeting during Chinese Reading: Evidence from a Survival Analysis of Saccade Length. Front Psychol 2017; 8:116. [PMID: 28220094 PMCID: PMC5292409 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00116] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2016] [Accepted: 01/17/2017] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Our study employs distributional analysis (i.e., survival analysis) to examine how the frequency of target words influences saccade lengths into and out of these target words in Chinese reading. The results of survival analysis indicate the survival curves in the high- and low-frequency conditions diverge for a short saccade length, with more than 80% of the lengths of incoming and outgoing saccades being larger than the divergence points. These results as well as simulations using the novel Dynamic-adjustment Model of saccadic targeting (Liu et al., 2016) are consistent with previous mean-based results and provide more precise information to support this novel model. The implications for saccade target selection during the reading of Chinese are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanping Liu
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China
| | - Ren Huang
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China
| | - Yugang Li
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China
| | - Dingguo Gao
- Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Disease, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China
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Liu Z, Pan Y, Tong W, Liu N. Effects of adults aging on word encoding in reading Chinese: evidence from disappearing text. PeerJ 2017; 5:e2897. [PMID: 28123911 PMCID: PMC5244883 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2897] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/29/2016] [Accepted: 12/11/2016] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The effect of aging on the process of word encoding for fixated words and words presented to the right of the fixation point during the reading of sentences in Chinese was investigated with two disappearing text experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that only the 40-ms onset disappearance of word n disrupted young adults' reading performance. However, for old readers, the disappearance of word n caused disruptions until the onset time was 120 ms. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the disappearance of word n + 1 did not cause disruptions to young adults, but these conditions made old readers spend more time reading a sentence compared to the normal display condition. These results indicated a reliable aging effect on the process of word encoding when reading Chinese, and that the encoding process in the preview frame was more susceptible to normal aging compared to that in the fixation frame. We propose that sensory, cognitive, and specific factors related to the Chinese language are important contributors to these age-related differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhifang Liu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
| | - Yun Pan
- Department of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, Guizhou, China
| | - Wen Tong
- Department of Psychology, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen, Shanxi, China
| | - Nina Liu
- Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, Tianjin, China
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Zang C, Zhang M, Bai X, Yan G, Angele B, Liversedge SP. Skipping of the very-high-frequency structural particle de () in Chinese reading. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2017; 71:1-10. [PMID: 27998212 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1272617] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
How do readers decide whether to skip or fixate a word? Angele and Rayner [2013. Processing the in the parafovea: Are articles skipped automatically? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 649-662] showed that English readers base skipping decisions on the parafoveal information available, but not the sentential context. Due to the increased visual density of the language, Chinese readers may be able to process a parafoveal word and integrate it with the sentence context to a greater extent than English readers. Consequently, influences on skipping decisions in Chinese may differ from those in English. In a boundary paradigm experiment, participants read sentences containing a single-character target verb (e.g., meaning get) whose preview was manipulated in three conditions: identity preview; a preview consisting of the syntactically anomalous high-frequency structural particle de (), or a pseudocharacter preview. The results showed that Chinese readers were more likely to skip the target when the preview was de than in either of the other conditions, suggesting that de-skipping is triggered by the parafoveal preview of a highly frequent particle word rather than on the likelihood of the upcoming word given the sentential context..
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Affiliation(s)
- Chuanli Zang
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin , P.R. China
| | - Manman Zhang
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin , P.R. China
| | - Xuejun Bai
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin , P.R. China
| | - Guoli Yan
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Tianjin , P.R. China
| | - Bernhard Angele
- b Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth , UK
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Abstract
Recent studies have demonstrated that when contextual diversity is controlled token word frequency has minimal effects on visual word recognition. With the exception of a single experiment by Plummer, Perea, & Rayner (2014, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 275-283), those studies have examined words in isolation. The current studies address two potential limitations of the Plummer et al. experiment. First, because Plummer et al. used different sentence frames for words in different conditions, the effects might be due to uncontrolled differences on the sentences. Second, the absence of a frequency effect might be attributed to comparing higher and lower frequency words within a limited range. Three eye-tracking experiments examined effects of contextual diversity and frequency on Mandarin Chinese, a logographic language, for words embedded in the normal sentences. In Experiment 1, yoked words were rotated through the same sentence frame. Experiments 2a and 2b used a design similar to Plummer et al., which allows use of a larger sample of words to compare results between experiments with a smaller and larger difference in log frequency (0.41 and 1.06, respectively). In all three experiments, first-pass and later eye movement measures were significantly shorter for targets with higher contextual diversity than for targets with lower contextual diversity, with no effects of frequency.
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41
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Liu Y, Reichle ED, Li X. The effect of word frequency and parafoveal preview on saccade length during the reading of Chinese. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2016; 42:1008-25. [PMID: 27045319 DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
There are currently 2 theoretical accounts of how readers of Chinese select their saccade targets: (a) by moving their eyes to specific saccade targets (i.e., the default-targeting hypothesis) and (b) by adjusting their saccade lengths to accommodate lexical processing (i.e., the dynamic-adjustment hypothesis). In this article, we first report the results of an eye-movement experiment using a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. This experiment demonstrates that both target-word frequency and its preview validity modulate the lengths of the saccades entering and exiting the target words, with longer saccades to/from high-frequency words when their preview was available. We then report the results of 2 simulations using computational models that instantiate the core theoretical assumptions of the default-targeting and dynamic-adjustment hypotheses. Comparisons of these simulations indicate that the dynamic-adjustment hypothesis provides a better quantitative account of the data from our experiment using fewer free parameters. We conclude by discussing evidence for dynamic saccade adjustment during the reading of alphabetic languages, and why such a heuristic may be necessary to fully explain eye-movement control during the reading of both alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanping Liu
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
| | | | - Xingshan Li
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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42
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Liversedge SP, Drieghe D, Li X, Yan G, Bai X, Hyönä J. Universality in eye movements and reading: A trilingual investigation. Cognition 2015; 147:1-20. [PMID: 26605961 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2013] [Revised: 09/25/2015] [Accepted: 10/14/2015] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Universality in language has been a core issue in the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics for many years (e.g., Chomsky, 1965). Recently, Frost (2012) has argued that establishing universals of process is critical to the development of meaningful, theoretically motivated, cross-linguistic models of reading. In contrast, other researchers argue that there is no such thing as universals of reading (e.g., Coltheart & Crain, 2012). Reading is a complex, visually mediated psychological process, and eye movements are the behavioural means by which we encode the visual information required for linguistic processing. To investigate universality of representation and process across languages we examined eye movement behaviour during reading of very comparable stimuli in three languages, Chinese, English and Finnish. These languages differ in numerous respects (character based vs. alphabetic, visual density, informational density, word spacing, orthographic depth, agglutination, etc.). We used linear mixed modelling techniques to identify variables that captured common variance across languages. Despite fundamental visual and linguistic differences in the orthographies, statistical models of reading behaviour were strikingly similar in a number of respects, and thus, we argue that their composition might reflect universality of representation and process in reading.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Xin Li
- Tianjin Normal University, PR China
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43
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Zang C, Zhang M, Bai X, Yan G, Paterson KB, Liversedge SP. Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2015; 69:1409-25. [PMID: 26366620 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1083594] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chuanli Zang
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, School of Education Science , Tianjin Normal University , Tianjin , China
| | - Manman Zhang
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, School of Education Science , Tianjin Normal University , Tianjin , China
| | - Xuejun Bai
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, School of Education Science , Tianjin Normal University , Tianjin , China
| | - Guoli Yan
- a Academy of Psychology and Behavior, School of Education Science , Tianjin Normal University , Tianjin , China
| | - Kevin B Paterson
- b Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour , University of Leicester , Leicester , UK
| | - Simon P Liversedge
- c Centre for Vision and Cognition, School of Psychology , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK
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Ma G, Li X, Rayner K. Readers extract character frequency information from nonfixated-target word at long pretarget fixations during Chinese reading. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2015; 41:1409-19. [PMID: 26168144 PMCID: PMC4767270 DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000072] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We performed 2 eye movement studies to explore whether readers can extract character or word frequency information from nonfixated-target words in Chinese reading. In Experiments 1A and 1B, we manipulated the character frequency of the first character in a 2-character target word and the word frequency of a 2-character target word, respectively. We found that fixation durations on the pretarget words were shorter when the first character of a 2-character target word was presented with high frequency. Such effects were not observed for word frequency manipulations of a 2-character target word. In particular, further analysis revealed that such effects only occurred for long pretarget fixations. These results for character and word frequency manipulations were replicated in a within-subjects design in Experiment 2. These findings are generally consistent with the notion that characters are processed in parallel during Chinese reading. However, we did not find evidence that words are processed in parallel during Chinese reading.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guojie Ma
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Xingshan Li
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
| | - Keith Rayner
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego
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Liu P, Li W, Han B, Li X. Effects of anomalous characters and small stroke omissions on eye movements during the reading of Chinese sentences. ERGONOMICS 2014; 57:1659-1669. [PMID: 25105833 DOI: 10.1080/00140139.2014.945492] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
We investigated the influence of typographical errors (typos) on eye movements and word recognition in Chinese reading. Participants' eye movements were tracked as they read sentences in which the target words were presented (1) normally, (2) with the initial stroke of the first characters removed (the omitted stroke condition) or (3) the first characters replaced by anomalous characters (the anomalous character condition). The results indicated that anomalous characters caused longer fixation durations and shorter outgoing forward saccade lengths than the correct words. This finding is consistent with the prediction of the theory of the processing-based strategy. Additionally, anomalous characters strongly disrupted lexical processing and whole sentence comprehension, but small stroke omissions did not. Implications of the effect of processing difficulty on forward saccade targeting for models of eye movement control during Chinese reading are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pingping Liu
- a Centre on Aging Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , People's Republic of China
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46
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Abstract
In Chinese reading, there are no spaces to mark the word boundaries, so Chinese readers cannot target their saccades to the center of a word. In this study, we investigated how Chinese readers decide where to move their eyes during reading. To do so, we introduced a variant of the boundary paradigm in which only the target stimulus remained on the screen, displayed at the saccade landing site, after the participant's eyes crossed an invisible boundary. We found that when the saccade target was a word, reaction times in a lexical decision task were shorter when the saccade landing position was closer to the end of that word. These results are consistent with the predictions of a processing-based strategy to determine where to move the eyes. Specifically, this hypothesis assumes that Chinese readers estimate how much information is processed in parafoveal vision and saccade to a location that will carry novel information.
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47
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Cui L, Drieghe D, Bai X, Yan G, Liversedge SP. Parafoveal preview benefit in unspaced and spaced Chinese reading. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2014; 67:2172-88. [PMID: 24678729 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2014.909858] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
In an eye movement experiment during reading, we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences either in the familiar, unspaced format or with spaces inserted between the words. Single-character words or the first of a two-character word were either presented normally or were replaced by a pseudocharacter in the preview. Results indicate that word spacing increased the parafoveal preview benefit but only for the one-character target words. We hypothesized that the incorrect preview of the first character of the two-character word prevented parafoveal processing of the ensuing character(s), effectively nullifying any benefits from the spacing. Our results suggest that word boundary demarcation allows for more precise focusing of attention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lei Cui
- a Department of Psychology , Tianjin Normal University , Tianjin , China
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48
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Ma G, Li X, Rayner K. Word segmentation of overlapping ambiguous strings during Chinese reading. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2014; 40:1046-59. [PMID: 24417292 DOI: 10.1037/a0035389] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In 3 experiments, we tested 3 possible mechanisms for segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings in Chinese reading. The first 2 characters and the last 2 characters in a 3-character ambiguous string could both constitute a word in the reported studies. The left-priority hypothesis assumes that the word on the left has an advantage in the competition and the other word cannot be processed until the word on the left is recognized. The independent processing hypothesis assumes that words in different positions are processed simultaneously and independently, and the word segmentation ambiguity cannot be settled without the help of sentence context. The competition hypothesis assumes that all of the words compete for a single winner. The results support a competition account that the characters in the perceptual span activate all of the words they can constitute, and any word can win the competition if its activation is high enough.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guojie Ma
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
| | - Xingshan Li
- Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
| | - Keith Rayner
- Department of Psychology, University of California-San Diego
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