The role of visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in L2 Japanese reading proficiency

Verbal working memory is recognized as a strong predictor of L2 reading development in the area of learning new vocabulary, reading comprehension, and overall L2 proficiency in alphabetic languages such as English. However, few studies have addressed if the same is true in logographic languages such as Japanese. Previous literature has indicated that phonology plays a weaker role in reading Japanese than alphabetic languages and that visual information is often processed for semantic rather than phonetic information. Based on these findings, it was hypothesized that visuo-spatial working memory would display a stronger relationship with Japanese reading proficiency than verbal working memory. This study investigated the relationship between (a) visuo-spatial working memory and Japanese reading proficiency and (b) verbal working memory and Japanese reading proficiency. Thirty learners of Japanese as a foreign language had their visuo-spatial working memory assessed using a spatial span task and a dual 3-back task. Their verbal working memory was assessed using an automated reading span task. Participants also took a Japanese cloze test and proficiency self-rating questionnaire to indicate their reading proficiency. Correlations were not found between the visuo-spatial working memory tasks and the Japanese cloze test, but a weak correlation was found between the verbal working memory task and the Japanese cloze test. Since the reading assessment used in this study had questionable validity, the hypothesis and research questions for this study could not be fully addressed. Suggestions are made for refining assessment tools and using other techniques to help us better understand of the relationship between working memory measures and Japanese reading proficiency

THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE KATAKANA WORD RECOGNITION TRAINING AMONG NOVICE LEARNERS OF JAPANESE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Because word recognition processes differ depending on orthographic systems, second language learners with different orthographic backgrounds need to acquire new word recognition strategies suitable to the orthography in their second language. Japanese is a multi-script language and one of the scripts, katakana, is mainly used to transcribe Western loanwords. Due to the sound alternations resulting from the process of borrowing, learners of Japanese often experience difficulties in reading and writing katakana loanwords. Thus, this study investigates the effectiveness of online katakana word recognition training among novice learners of Japanese. Thirty-one students from a first-semester Japanese course at a large research university in the Midwest were randomly divided into three groups and assigned different online training programs outside of the class for four weeks designed to establish sound-letter correspondences of katakana. The first experimental group (Scrambler Group) put the randomly scrambled letters in the right order to form a target katakana loanword by listening to the vocalized word, while the second experimental group (Reading Group) practiced with the same set of the words solely by enunciating and listening to the model reading. The participants took pre- and post-tests before and after the training so that the improvement resulting from the training was observed. The test was composed of two tasks, naming and providing the English meanings of katakana words. The number of correct answers was counted and the response time for a participant to process each word was measured. The test included words practiced in the training and unpracticed words in order to test whether the training effects was transferred to processing unpracticed words

Japanese Hiragana Handwriting Pattern Recognition Using Template Matching Correlation Method

Hiragana is one of the traditional Japanese letters used to translate native Japanese words. The introduction of an object requires a learning process, which is obtained through the characteristic in the form of unique features on similar objects, but manually it is quite difficult to distinguish these letters. This writing explains the discussion system to differentiate between hiragana letters starting from preprocess namely grayscale and threshold, then segmenting and normalization, while image classification uses the Template Matching Correlation method. The results of tests carried out assessing the test rate of around 76% using the Matching Template Correlation method. While the remaining 14% indicates that the object identified does not match the intended results

Learner-Friendly Kanji Learning System with Radical Analysis

This paper presents a novel friendly Kanji learning system using Radical Analysis to enable foreign people and elementary school students to learn Kanji by an interesting and efficient way. This way is for characters to analyze for each radical, to divide into some parts, and to correct strokes for each divided part. Here, the Radical Analysis Database (RAD) is used for dividing characters. RAD is a database to analyze characters for each radical and divide into some parts. On the other hand, characters are corrected by using a threshold. The threshold is a judgment value in the correction and learners can set it freely by handling threshold bars put on the interface. Then, the novel system is improved so that learners can set thresholds for each divided part. Since each bar corresponds to each part, the system judges whether each part is corrected or not according to set thresholds. Hence, since learners can freely determine radicals or parts in which they want to be instructed intensively, they can practice only their radicals not good or part of the character and easily master difficult characters, too. In addition, an animation helps learners understand the order of strokes virtually. Since each stroke used in this animation is displayed with different colors, learners can also understand virtually where the same strokes are from and to at once.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v1i1.47

How form and structure of Chinese characters affect eye movement control

This study investigated the correlations between the form features and legibility of Chinese characters by employing the eye tracking method in two experiments: Experiment 1 examined factors affecting Chinese character legibility with character modules and identified the correlations between character form and legibility of crossing strokes; and Experiment 2 examined the effect of crossing strokes on subjective complicacy perception in both Chinese characters and English letters. This study determined that enclosed Chinese characters affect subjective complicacy perception and reduce saccadic amplitude. In addition, greater number of stroke crossings produced higher subjective complicacy perceived for both Chinese characters and English letters. The results of this study serve as a reference for predicting Chinese character legibility and assessing type design superiority

Recognition of Japanese handwritten characters with Machine learning techniques

The recognition of Japanese handwritten characters has always been a challenge for researchers. A large number of classes, their graphic complexity, and the existence of three different writing systems make this problem particularly difficult compared to Western writing. For decades, attempts have been made to address the problem using traditional OCR (Optical Character Recognition) techniques, with mixed results. With the recent popularization of machine learning techniques through neural networks, this research has been revitalized, bringing new approaches to the problem. These new results achieve performance levels comparable to human recognition. Furthermore, these new techniques have allowed collaboration with very different disciplines, such as the Humanities or East Asian studies, achieving advances in them that would not have been possible without this interdisciplinary work. In this thesis, these techniques are explored until reaching a sufficient level of understanding that allows us to carry out our own experiments, training neural network models with public datasets of Japanese characters. However, the scarcity of public datasets makes the task of researchers remarkably difficult. Our proposal to minimize this problem is the development of a web application that allows researchers to easily collect samples of Japanese characters through the collaboration of any user. Once the application is fully operational, the examples collected until that point will be used to create a new dataset in a specific format. Finally, we can use the new data to carry out comparative experiments with the previous neural network models

Detection of deviance in Japanese kanji compound words

Reading fluency is based on the automatic visual recognition of words. As a manifestation of the automatic processing of words, an automatic deviance detection of visual word stimuli can be observed in the early stages of visual recognition. To clarify whether this phenomenon occurs with Japanese kanji compounds-since their lexicality is related to semantic association-we investigated the brain response by utilizing three types of deviants: differences in font type, lexically correct or incorrect Japanese kanji compound words and pseudo-kanji characters modified from correct and incorrect compounds. We employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to evaluate the spatiotemporal profiles of the related brain regions. The study included 22 adult native Japanese speakers (16 females). The abovementioned three kinds of stimuli containing 20% deviants were presented during the MEG measurement. Activity in the occipital pole region of the brain was observed upon the detection of font-type deviance within 250 ms of stimulus onset. Although no significant activity upon detecting lexically correct/incorrect kanji compounds or pseudo-kanji character deviations was observed, the activity in the posterior transverse region of the collateral sulcus (pCoS)-which is a fusiform neighboring area-was larger when detecting lexically correct kanji compounds than when detecting pseudo-kanji characters. Taken together, these results support the notion that the automatic detection of deviance in kanji compounds may be limited to a low-level feature, such as the stimulus stroke thickness.Peer reviewe

Reading Strategies Used by High School Japanese Language Learners

World Readiness Standards emphasize the importance of language learners\u27 proficiency in literacy as well as life skills in contemporary society and future. Implementing authentic materials into language instruction is encouraged due to its benefits. Yet adaption of authentic materials for reading is usually delayed until higher-level classes in Japanese instruction at secondary levels. This is often due to the Japanese writing system, which is a combination of hiragana, katakana, and kanji and configures meaning of a sentence. The present study investigated to what extent Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) high school learners use reading strategies when they read authentic materials. The study also explored the differences and/or similarities in reading strategies between JFL high school students who are exposed to the topic vs. students who are not. Strategies JFL high school learners use to process the information from kanji was also reflected upon. The study examined 4 Japanese language learners of two suburban high schools in Central California. The results of the study indicate that use of students\u27 background knowledge is crucial for reading comprehension of authentic material written in Japanese

The Impact of Text Orientation on Form Effects with Chinese, Japanese and English readers

Does visuospatial orientation influence form priming effects in parallel ways in Chinese and English? Given the differences in how orthographic symbols are presented in Chinese versus English, one might expect to find some differences in early word recognition processes and, hence, in the nature of form priming effects. According to perceptual learning accounts, form priming effects (i.e., “form” priming effects) should be influenced by text orientation (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005; Grainger & Holcomb, 2009). In contrast, Witzel, Qiao, and Forster’s (2011) abstract letter unit account proposes that the mechanism responsible for such effect acts at a totally abstract orthographic level (i.e., the visuospatial orientation is irrelevant to the nature of the relevant orthographic code). One goal of the present research was to determine whether or not one of these accounts could explain form priming effects in both languges. Chapter 2 (Yang, Chen, Spinelli & Lupker, 2019) expanded the debate between these positions beyond alphabetic scripts and the syllabic Kana script used by Witzel et al. (2011) to a logographic script (Chinese). I report four experiments with Chinese participants in this chapter. The experiments showed masked form priming effects with targets in four different orientations (left-to-right, top-to-bottom, right-to-left, and bottom-to-top), supporting Witzel et al.’s account. Chapter 3 (Yang, Hino, Chen, Yoshihara, Nakayama, Xue, & Lupker, in press) provided an evaluation of whether the backward priming effect obtained in Experiment 2.3 (i.e., backward primes and forward targets) is truly an orthographic effect or whether it may be either morphologically/meaning- or syllabically/phonologically-based. Five experiments, two involving phonologically-related primes and three involving meaning-related primes, produced no evidence that either of those factors contributed to the backward priming effect, implying that it truly is an orthographic effect. In Chapter 4 (Yang & Lupker, 2019), I examined whether text rotation to different degrees (e.g., 0°, 90°, and 180° rotations) modulated transposed-letter (TL) priming effects in two experiments with English participants. The sizes of the priming effects were similar for horizontal 0°, 90° rotated and 180° rotated words providing further support for abstract letter unit accounts of orthographic coding. These results support abstract letter/character unit accounts of form priming effects while failing to support perceptual learning accounts. Further, these results also indicate a language difference in that Chinese readers have more flexible (i.e., less precise) letter position coding than English readers, a fact that poses an interesting new challenge to existing orthographic coding theories