Investigating word length effects in Chinese reading

A word’s length in English is fundamental in determining whether readers fixate it, and how long they spend processing it during reading. Chinese is unspaced and most words are two characters long: Is word length an important cue to eye guidance in Chinese reading? Eye movements were recorded as participants read sentences containing a one-, two-, or three-character word matched for frequency. Results showed that longer words took longer to process (primarily driven by refixations). Furthermore, skips were fewer, incoming saccades longer and landing positions further to the right of long than short words. Additional analyses of a three-character region (matched stroke number) showed an incremental processing cost when character(s) belonged to different, rather than the same, word. These results demonstrate that word length affects both lexical identification and saccade target selection in Chinese reading

The influence of foveal lexical processing load on parafoveal preview and saccadic targeting during Chinese reading

Whether increased foveal load causes a reduction of parafoveal processing remains equivocal. The present study examined foveal load effects on parafoveal processing in natural Chinese reading. Parafoveal preview of a single-character parafoveal target word was manipulated by using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975; pseudocharacter or identity previews) under high foveal load (low-frequency pretarget word) compared with low foveal load (high-frequency pretarget word) conditions. Despite an effective manipulation of foveal processing load, we obtained no evidence of any modulatory influence on parafoveal processing in first-pass reading times. However, our results clearly showed that saccadic targeting, in relation to forward saccade length from the pretarget word and in relation to target word skipping, was influenced by foveal load and this influence occurred independent of parafoveal preview. Given the optimal experimental conditions, these results provide very strong evidence that preview benefit is not modulated by foveal lexical load during Chinese reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved

The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading

In an eye movement experiment employing the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences. The target word was a 2-character compound that had either a noun-noun or an adjective-noun structure each sharing an identical noun as the second character. The boundary was located between the two characters of the compound word. Prior to the eyes crossing the boundary the preview of the second character was presented either normally or was replaced by a pseudo-character. Previously, Juhasz, Inhoff and Rayner (2005) observed that inserting a space into a normally unspaced compound in English significantly disrupted processing and that this disruption was larger for adjective-noun compounds than for noun-noun compounds. This finding supports the hypothesis that, at least in English, for adjective-noun compounds, the noun is more important for lexical identification than the adjective, while for noun-noun compounds, both constituents are similar in importance for lexical identification. Our results indicate a similar division of the importance of compounds in reading in Chinese as the pseudo-character preview was more disruptive for the adjective-noun compounds than for the noun-noun compounds. These findings also indicate that parafoveal processing can be influenced by the morphosyntactic structure of the currently fixated character

Brain Activation of Elite Race Walkers in Action Observation, Motor Imagery, and Motor Execution Tasks: A Pilot Study

Walking plays an important role in human daily life. Many previous studies suggested that long-term walking training can modulate brain functions. However, due to the use of measuring techniques such as fMRI and PET, which are highly motion-sensitive, it is difficult to record individual brain activities during the movement. This pilot study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure the hemodynamic responses in the frontal-parietal cortex of four elite race walkers (experimental group, EG) and twenty college students (control group, CG) during tasks involving action observation, motor imagery, and motor execution. The results showed that activation levels of the pars triangularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), premotor and supplementary motor cortex (PMC and SMC), and primary somatosensory cortex (S1) in the EG were significantly lower than in the CG during motor execution and observation tasks. And primary motor cortex (M1) of EG in motor execution task was significantly lower than its in CG. During the motor imagery task, activation intensities of the DLPFC, PMC and SMC, and M1 in the EG were significantly higher than in the CG. These findings suggested that the results of motor execution and observation tasks might support the brain efficiency hypothesis, and the related brain regions strengthened the efficiency of neural function, but the results in motor imagery tasks could be attributed to the internal forward model of elite race walkers, which showed a trend opposed to the brain efficiency hypothesis. Additionally, the activation intensities of the pars triangularis and PMC and SMC decreased with the passage of time in the motor execution and imagery tasks, whereas during the action observation task, no significant differences in these regions were found. This reflected differences of the internal processing among the tasks

The mechanism of word satiation in Tibetan reading: Evidence from eye movements

Two eye-tracking experiments were used to investigate the mechanism of word satiation in Tibetan reading. The results revealed that, at a low repetition level, gaze duration and total fixation duration in the semantically unrelated condition were significantly longer than in the semantically related condition; at a medium repetition level, reaction time in the semantically related condition was significantly longer than in the semantically unrelated condition; at a high repetition level, the total fixation duration and reaction time in the semantically related condition were significantly longer than in the semantically unrelated condition. However, fixation duration and reaction time showed no significant difference between the similar and dissimilar orthography at any repetition level. These findings imply that there are semantic priming effects in Tibetan reading at a low repetition level, but semantic satiation effects at greater repetition levels, which occur in the late stage of lexical processing

Word skipping in Chinese reading: The role of high-frequency preview and syntactic felicity

Two experiments are reported to investigate whether Chinese readers skip a high frequency preview word without taking the syntax of the sentence context into account. In Experiment 1, we manipulated target word syntactic category, frequency and preview using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). For high frequency verb targets, there were identity and pseudocharacter previews alongside a low frequency noun preview. For low frequency verb targets, there were identity and pseudocharacter previews alongside a high frequency noun preview. Results showed that for high frequency targets, skipping rates were higher for identical previews compared to the syntactically infelicitous alternative low frequency preview and pseudocharacter previews, however for low frequency targets, skipping rates were higher for high frequency previews (even when they were syntactically infelicitous) compared to the other two previews. Furthermore, readers were more likely to skip the target when they had a high frequency, syntactically felicitous preview compared to a high frequency, syntactically infelicitous preview. The pattern of felicity effects was statistically robust when readers launched saccades from near the target. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether display change awareness influenced the patterns of results in Experiment 1. Results showed that the overall patterns held in Experiment 2 regardless of some readers being more likely to be aware of the display change than others. These results suggest that decisions to skip a word in Chinese reading are primarily based on parafoveal word familiarity, though the syntactic felicity of a parafoveal word also exerts a robust influence for high frequency previews

Word length and frequency effects in natural Chinese reading: Evidence for character representations in lexical identification

Word length and frequency are two of the “big three” factors that affect eye movements in natural reading (Clifton et al., 2016). Whilst these factors have been extensively investigated, all previous studies manipulating word length have been confounded with changes in visual complexity (longer words have more letters and are more visually complex). We controlled stroke complexity across one-character (short) and two-character (long) high- and low-frequency Chinese words (to avoid complexity confounds) and recorded readers’ eye movements during sentence reading. Both word length and frequency yielded strong main effects for fixation time measures. For saccadic targeting and skipping probability, word length effects, but not word frequency effects, occurred. Critically, the interaction was not significant regardless of stroke complexity, indicating that word length and frequency independently influence lexical identification and saccade target selection during Chinese reading. The results provide evidence for character level representations during Chinese word recognition in natural reading

The use of probabilistic lexicality cues for word segmentation in Chinese reading

In an eye-tracking experiment we examined whether Chinese readers were sensitive to information concerning how often a Chinese character appears as a single-character word versus the first character in a two-character word, and whether readers use this information to segment words and adjust the amount of parafoveal processing of subsequent characters during reading. Participants read sentences containing a two-character target word with its first character more or less likely to be a single-character word. The boundary paradigm was used. The boundary appeared between the first character and the second character of the target word, and we manipulated whether readers saw an identity or a pseudocharacter preview of the second character of the target. Linear mixed-effects models revealed reduced preview benefit from the second character when the first character was more likely to be a single-character word. This suggests that Chinese readers use probabilistic combinatorial information about the likelihood of a Chinese character being single-character word or a two-character word online to modulate the extent of parafoveal processing

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

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