Usage of statistical cues for word boundary in reading Chinese sentences |
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| Authors: | Miao-Hsuan Yen Ralph Radach Ovid J-L Tzeng and Jie-Li Tsai |
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| Institution: | (1) Laboratories for Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan;(2) Department of Psychology and Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan;(3) General and Biological Psychology, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany;(4) The Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan;; |
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| Abstract: | The present study examined the use of statistical cues for word boundaries during Chinese reading. Participants were instructed
to read sentences for comprehension with their eye movements being recorded. A two-character target word was embedded in each
sentence. The contrast between the probabilities of the ending character (C2) of the target word (C12) being used as word
beginning and ending in all words containing it was manipulated. In addition, by using the boundary paradigm, parafoveal overlapping
ambiguity in the string C123 was manipulated with three types of preview of the character C3, which was a single-character
word in the identical condition. During preview, the combination of C23′ was a legal word in the ambiguous condition and was
not a word in the control condition. Significant probability and preview effects were observed. In the low-probability condition,
inconsistency in the frequent within-word position (word beginning) and the present position (word ending) lengthened gaze
durations and increased refixation rate on the target word. Although benefits from the identical previews were apparent, effects
of overlapping ambiguity were negligible. The results suggest that the probability of within-word positions had an influence
during character-to-word assignment, which was mainly verified during foveal processing. Thus, the overlapping ambiguity between
parafoveal words did not interfere with reading. Further investigation is necessary to examine whether current computational
models of eye movement control should incorporate statistical cues for word boundaries together with other linguistic factors
in their word processing system to account for Chinese reading. |
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