To space or not space? Interword spacing effects on Chinese children's reading materials

BCLA CLEAR Presbyopia: Evaluation and diagnosis

It is important to be able to measure the range of clear focus in clinical practice to advise on presbyopia correction techniques and to optimise the correction power. Both subjective and objective techniques are necessary: subjective techniques (such as patient reported outcome questionnaires and defocus curves) assess the impact of presbyopia on a patient and how the combination of residual objective accommodation and their natural DoF work for them; objective techniques (such as autorefraction, corneal topography and lens imaging) allow the clinician to understand how well a technique is working optically and whether it is the right choice or how adjustments can be made to optimise performance. Techniques to assess visual performance and adverse effects must be carefully conducted to gain a reliable end-point, considering the target size, contrast and illumination. Objective techniques are generally more reliable, can help to explain unexpected subjective results and imaging can be a powerful communication tool with patients. A clear diagnosis, excluding factors such as binocular vision issues or digital eye strain that can also cause similar symptoms, is critical for the patient to understand and adapt to presbyopia. Some corrective options are more permanent, such as implanted inlays / intraocular lenses or laser refractive surgery, so the optics can be trialled with contact lenses in advance (including differences between the eyes) to better communicate with the patient how the optics will work for them so they can make an informed choice.

The effects of text direction of different text lengths on Chinese reading

This study investigates the effects of text direction (horizontal and vertical) and length (long and short) on Chinese reading performance. The experiment enrolled 68 university students aged 19-29 years who were asked to read articles. We recorded reading times and measured recall after reading using a memory test and measured task load using the NASA-TLX scale. The results show that horizontal text was read faster than vertical text. When reading long texts, horizontal reading has a better memory effect than vertical reading. When reading short texts, the effect of text direction on memory was not significant. Moreover, the mental, physical, and temporal demands of horizontal text were lower than those of vertical text. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the impact of text direction, provide valuable suggestions for Chinese typography, and help readers obtain better reading outcomes.

Effects of syllable boundaries in Tibetan reading

Interword spaces exist in the texts of many languages that use alphabetic writing systems. In most cases, interword spaces, as a kind of word boundary information, play an important role in the reading process of readers. Tibetan also uses alphabetic writing, its text has no spaces between words as word boundary markers. Instead, there are intersyllable tshegs (" "), which are superscript dots. Interword spaces play an important role in reading as word boundary information. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the role of tshegs and what effect replacing tshegs with spaces will have on Tibetan reading. To answer these questions, Experiment 1 was conducted in which 72 Tibetan undergraduates read three-syllable-boundary conditions (normal, spaced, and untsheged). However, in Experiment 1, because we performed the experimental operations of deleting tshegs and replacing tshegs, the spatial information distribution of Tibetan sentences under different operating conditions was different, which may have a certain potential impact on the experimental results. To rule out the underlying confounding factor, in Experiment 2, 58 undergraduates read sentences for both untsheged and alternating-color conditions. Overall, the global and local analyses revealed that tshegs, spaces, and alternating-color markers as syllable boundaries can help readers segment syllables in Tibetan reading. In Tibetan reading, both spaces and tshegs are effective visual syllable segmentation cues, and spaces are more effective visual syllable segmentation cues than tshegs.

Do visual word segmentation cues improve reading performance in Chinese reading？

It is controversial whether providing visual word segmentation cues can improve Chinese reading performance. This study investigated this topic by examining how visual word segmentation cues such as grey highlighting, red colour and interword spacing influence global sentence reading and local word recognition during reading Chinese text in three experiments. The results showed that interword spacing could facilitate local word recognition but could not increase reading speed. In contrast, grey highlighting and red colour could improve neither local word recognition nor global sentence reading performance. Instead, these cues increased the number of fixations and saccades, resulting in slower reading speed. These results suggest that even red colour is not a practically visual cue for Chinese word segmentation and the corresponding mechanisms were discussed. Practitioner Summary: We studied how visual cues such as grey highlighting, red colour and interword spacing influenced Chinese reading performance. Our data showed that even the red colour was not an efficient cue for Chinese word segmentation. The corresponding mechanisms and future direction were discussed regarding how to improve Chinese reading performance.