The Importance of the Positional Probability of Word Final (but Not Word Initial) Characters for Word Segmentation and Identification in Children and Adults' Natural Chinese Reading

Autor/inn/en	Liang, Feifei; Gao, Qi; Li, Xin; Wang, Yongsheng; Bai, Xuejun; Liversedge, Simon P.
Titel	The Importance of the Positional Probability of Word Final (but Not Word Initial) Characters for Word Segmentation and Identification in Children and Adults' Natural Chinese Reading
Quelle	In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 49 (2023) 1, S.98-115 (18 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Liang, Feifei) ORCID (Liversedge, Simon P.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0278-7393
DOI	10.1037/xlm0001116
Schlagwörter	Reading Processes; Chinese; Orthographic Symbols; Word Recognition; Probability; Eye Movements; Sentences; Reading Rate; Word Frequency; Task Analysis; Undergraduate Students; Foreign Countries; Grade 3; Elementary School Students; Comparative Analysis; Scores; Age Differences; China + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Leseprozess; China; Chinesen; Worterkennung; Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung; Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie; Augenbewegung; Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Reading readiness; Reading speed; Lesegeschwindigkeit; Word analysis; Frequency; Wortanalyse; Häufigkeit; Aufgabenanalyse; Ausland; School year 03; 3. Schuljahr; Schuljahr 03; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied
Abstract	Word spacing is important in guiding eye movements during spaced alphabetic reading. Chinese is unspaced and it remains unclear as to how Chinese readers segment and identify words in reading. We conducted two parallel experiments to investigate whether the positional probabilities of the initial and the final characters of a multicharacter word affected word segmentation and identification in Chinese reading. Two-character words were selected as targets. In Experiment 1, the initial character's positional probability was manipulated as being either high or low, and the final character was kept identical across the two conditions. In Experiment 2, an analogous manipulation was made for the final character of the target word. We recorded adults' and children's eye movements when they read sentences containing these words. In Experiment 1, reading times on targets did not differ in the two conditions for both children and adults, providing no evidence that a word initial character's positional probability contributes to word segmentation. In Experiment 2, adults had shorter reading times and made fewer refixations on targets that comprised final characters with high relative to low positional probabilities; a similar effect was observed in children, but this effect had a slower time course. The results demonstrate that the positional probability of the final (but not the initial) character of a word influences segmentation commitments in reading. It suggests that Chinese readers identify where a currently fixated word ends, and via this commitment, by default, they identify where the subsequent word begins. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01