EXPRESS: Predictability effects and parafoveal processing of compound words in natural Chinese reading

We report a boundary paradigm eye movement experiment to investigate whether the predictability of the second character of a two-character compound word affects how it is processed prior to direct fixation during reading. The boundary was positioned immediately prior to the second character of the target word, which itself was either predictable or unpredictable. The preview was either a pseudocharacter (nonsense preview), or an identity preview. We obtained clear preview effects in all conditions, but more importantly, skipping probability for the second character of the target word and the whole target word from pretarget was greater when it was predictable than when it was not predictable from the preceding context. Interactive effects for later measures on the whole target word (gaze duration and go-past time) were also obtained. These results demonstrate that predictability information from preceding sentential context and information regarding the likely identity of upcoming characters are used concurrently to constrain the nature of lexical processing during natural Chinese reading.

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

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2017.1307426 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 190-197 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Denis Drieghe ◽

Lei Cui ◽

Guoli Yan ◽

Xuejun Bai ◽

Hui Chi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Target Word ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Compound Word ◽

Preview Benefit ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Compound Words ◽

Parafoveal Processing ◽

Parafoveal Preview ◽

Noun Compounds ◽

Boundary Paradigm

In an eye movement experiment employing the boundary paradigm, we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences. The target word was a two-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 pseudocharacter. Previously, Juhasz, Inhoff, and Rayner 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 pseudocharacter 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.

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Parafoveal preview effects depend on both preview plausibility and target predictability

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2016.1247894 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 64-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Aaron Veldre ◽

Sally Andrews

Keyword(s):

Target Word ◽

Lexical Processing ◽

Parafoveal Preview ◽

Contextual Constraint ◽

Preceding Context ◽

Preceding Sentence ◽

Boundary Paradigm ◽

The Impact ◽

Shed Light

Recent studies using the boundary paradigm have shown that readers benefit from a parafoveal preview of a plausible continuation of the sentence. This plausibility preview effect occurs irrespective of the semantic or orthographic relatedness of the preview and target word, suggesting that it depends on the degree to which a preview word fits the preceding context. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining the impact of contextual constraint on processing a plausible word in the parafovea. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which a target word was either highly predictable or unpredictable. The boundary paradigm was used to compare predictable, unpredictable, and implausible previews. The results showed that target predictability significantly modulated the effects of identical and plausible previews. Identical previews yielded significantly more benefit than plausible previews for highly predictable targets, but for unpredictable targets a plausible preview was as beneficial as an identical preview. The results shed light on the role of contextual predictability in early lexical processing. Furthermore, these data support the view that readers activate a set of appropriate words from the preceding sentence context, prior to the presentation of the target word.

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Skipping of the very-high-frequency structural particle de (的) in Chinese reading

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2016.1272617 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 152-160 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Chuanli Zang ◽

Manman Zhang ◽

Xuejun Bai ◽

Guoli Yan ◽

Bernhard Angele ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Experimental Psychology ◽

High Frequency ◽

The Other ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Very High Frequency ◽

Sentential Context ◽

Parafoveal Preview ◽

Single Character ◽

Boundary Paradigm ◽

Very High

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., 取 meaning get) whose preview was manipulated in three conditions: identity preview; a preview consisting of the syntactically anomalous high-frequency structural particle de (的), 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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Dissociating Morpheme Form and Meaning: Evidence for Morphological Decomposition of Compound Words during Reading

10.31234/osf.io/fcdtj ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Teon L Brooks ◽

Peter C. Gordon

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Reading Time ◽

Lexical Processing ◽

Semantic Transparency ◽

Prime Word ◽

Compound Words ◽

First Pass ◽

Complex Words ◽

Prior Processing

Compound words have two free morphemes whose individual meanings can have a transparent (e.g., roadside) or opaque (e.g., butterfly) relationship to the overall meaning. It is unclear when meaning is accessed during lexical processing of compounds (and other morphologically complex words), with conflicting results from priming in lexical-decision studies and from reading-time studies that examine how the characteristics of a compound affect its processing. The present studies examined eye-movement measures on target words in a sentence as a function of their relation in form and meaning to a prime word that occurred earlier in the sentence. In Experiment 1 the primes were transparent or opaque compounds and the targets were the first constituent of the compound (e.g., doll preceded by dollhouse vs. container; and brief preceded by briefcase vs. portfolio). First-pass measures showed that target-word recognition was facilitated by prior processing of the compound but that the amount of facilitation was not affected by semantic transparency, a pattern that suggests that there is a stage of processing where compounds are decomposed into their constituent morphemes regardless of their composite meaning. Experiment 2 used first constituents as primes and compounds as targets. First-pass measures showed priming on recognition of both transparent and opaque compounds. Priming facilitation persisted on later measures of lexical processing for transparent compounds but became inhibitory for opaque compounds. These results show that compounds are initially decomposed into their constituent words independently of meaning, but that later in processing activation of the meaning of a constituent word facilitates comprehension of semantically consistent compounds but competes with comprehension of semantically inconsistent compounds.

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Parafoveal processing within and between words

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470210802400010 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 62 (7) ◽

pp. 1356-1376 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Barbara J. Juhasz ◽

Alexander Pollatsek ◽

Jukka Hyönä ◽

Denis Drieghe ◽

Keith Rayner

Keyword(s):

Eye Movement ◽

Item Type ◽

Tennis Ball ◽

Compound Words ◽

Parafoveal Processing ◽

Parafoveal Preview ◽

Linguistic Unit ◽

Research Experiment ◽

Boundary Paradigm

Parafoveal preview was examined within and between words in two eye movement experiments. In Experiment 1, unspaced and spaced English compound words were used (e.g., basketball, tennis ball). Prior to fixating the second lexeme, either a correct or a partial parafoveal preview (e.g., ball or badk) was provided using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). There was a larger effect of parafoveal preview on unspaced compound words than on spaced compound words. However, the parafoveal preview effect on spaced compound words was larger than would be predicted on the basis of prior research. Experiment 2 examined whether this large effect was due to spaced compounds forming a larger linguistic unit by pairing spaced compounds with nonlexicalized adjective–noun pairs. There were no significant interactions between item type and parafoveal preview, suggesting that it is the syntactic predictability of the noun that is driving the large preview effect.

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Character-complexity effects in Chinese reading and visual search: A comparison and theoretical implications

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2016.1272616 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 140-151 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Lili Yu ◽

Qiaoming Zhang ◽

Caspian Priest ◽

Erik D Reichle ◽

Heather Sheridan

Keyword(s):

Eye Movement ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Lexical Processing ◽

Search Task ◽

Visual Complexity ◽

English Speakers ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Fixation Durations ◽

Native Chinese Speakers

Three eye-movement experiments were conducted to examine how the complexity of characters in Chinese words (i.e., number of strokes per character) influences their processing and eye-movement behaviour. In Experiment 1, English speakers with no significant knowledge of Chinese searched for specific low-, medium-, and high-complexity target characters in a multi-page narrative containing characters of varying complexity (3–16 strokes). Fixation durations and skipping rates were influenced by the visual complexity of both the target characters and the characters being searched even though participants had no knowledge of Chinese. In Experiment 2, native Chinese speakers performed the same character-search task, and a similar pattern of results was observed. Finally, in Experiment 3, a second sample of native Chinese speakers read the same text used in Experiments 1 and 2, with text characters again exhibiting complexity effects. These results collectively suggest that character-complexity effects on eye movements may not be due to lexical processing per se but may instead reflect whatever visual processing is required to know whether or not a character corresponds to an episodically represented target. The theoretical implications of this for our understanding of normal reading are discussed.

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Eye-Movement Evidence for Object-Based Attention in Chinese Reading

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797617734827 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 278-287 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Yanping Liu ◽

Erik D. Reichle

Keyword(s):

Target Word ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Response Times ◽

Movement Control ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Eye Movement Control ◽

Visual Objects ◽

Lexical Decisions ◽

Object Based ◽

Word Frequencies

Is attention allocated to only one word or to multiple words at any given time during reading? The experiments reported here addressed this question using a novel paradigm inspired by classic findings on object-based attention. In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 18) made lexical decisions about one of two spatially colocated Chinese words or nonwords. Our main finding was that only the attended word’s frequency influenced response times and accuracy. In Experiment 2, participants ( N = 30) read target words embedded in two spatially colocated Chinese sentences. Our key finding here was that only target-word frequencies influenced looking times and fixation positions. These results support the hypothesis that words are attended in a strictly serial (and perhaps object-based) manner during reading. The theoretical implications of this conclusion are discussed in relation to models of eye-movement control during reading and the conceptualization of words as visual objects.

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