Spelling ability selectively predicts the magnitude of disruption in unspaced text reading.

Abstract

We examined the effect of individual differences in written language proficiency on unspaced text reading in a large sample of skilled adult readers who were assessed on reading comprehension and spelling ability. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing a low or high frequency target word, presented with standard interword spacing, or in one of three unsegmented text conditions that either preserved or eliminated word boundary information. The average data replicated previous studies: unspaced text reading was associated with increased fixation durations, a higher number of fixations, more regressions, reduced saccade length, and an inflation of the word frequency effect. The individual differences results provided insight into the mechanisms contributing to these effects. Higher reading ability was associated with greater overall reading speed and fluency in all conditions. In contrast, spelling ability selectively modulated the effect of interword spacing with poorer spelling ability predicting greater difficulty across the majority of sentence- and word-level measures. These results suggest that high quality lexical representations allowed better spellers to extract lexical units from unfamiliar text forms, inoculating them against the disruptive effects of being deprived of spacing information.

Reading without spaces revisited: The role of word identification and sentence-level constraints

“…Nevertheless, it is important to note that (i) historically, Latin script was originally written without extra between-word spacing (scriptura continua; see Saenger, 1997), and (ii) many contemporary written languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai, do not use between-word spacing. Reading unspaced text is nevertheless harder than reading text with normal between-word spacing, a pattern revealed by a number of studies recording the eye movements of skilled readers while they read regularly spaced and unspaced text (Epelboim, Booth, Ashkenazy, Taleghani, & Steinman, 1997;Epelboim, Booth, & Steinman, 1994Morris, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 1990;Perea & Acha, 2009;Pollatsek & Rayner, 1982;Rayner, 1998;Rayner, Fischer, & Pollatsek, 1998;Spragins, Lefton, & Fisher, 1976;Veldre, Drieghe, & Andrews, 2017). 1 These studies have revealed that reading unspaced text is slower by about 40% to 70% than reading normally spaced text Rayner & Pollatsek, 1996).…”

“…1 These studies have revealed that reading unspaced text is slower by about 40% to 70% than reading normally spaced text Rayner & Pollatsek, 1996). Readers make shorter saccades accompanied by longer fixations and more regressions when reading unspaced text, and the effect of word frequency on fixation durations is greater with unspaced text Veldre et al, 2017). Furthermore, given the overall shorter saccade lengths, initial landing positions are closer to the beginning of words in unspaced text (Paterson & Jordan, 2010;Perea & Acha, 2009).…”

Parafoveal preview effects in reading unspaced text.

“…They observed the earliest discernible influence of word frequency in spaced text 112 ms from the start of fixation, with no discernible difference until 152 ms into the fixation when the text was unspaced. Finally, in an individual differences study, Veldre, Drieghe and Andrews (2017) observed that the negative impact of the unspaced format on reading behaviour was less pronounced for participants with good spelling ability, again linking the effects of spacing to lexical processing, more specifically to the quality of the lexical representations as indexed by spelling ability.…”

“…Removing spaces in English results in an increase in reading times by 30-50% and it also increases average fixation durations, increases the number of fixations, increases the number of regressions, and reduces the average saccade length (Epelboim, Booth, Askenazy, Talghani & Steinman, 1997;Epelboim, Booth & Steinman, 1994; Malt & Seaman, 1978;McGowan, White, Jordan, & Paterson, 2014;Perea & Acha, 2009;Perea, Tejero & Winskel, 2015;Pollatsek & Rayner, 1982;Rayner, Fischer & Pollatsek, 1998;Rayner & Pollatsek, 1996;Sheridan, Rayner, & Reingold, 2013;Sheridan, Reichle & Reingold, 2016;Spragins, Lefton & Fisher, 1976;Veldre, Drieghe, & Andrews, 2017;Yang & McConkie, 2001).…”

“…Note that the differences between the Sheridan et al and the current study are non-trivial given the differences in how the unspaced layout was implemented. Veldre, Drieghe and Andrews (2017) directly compared spaced reading with three unsegmented text conditions that either preserved or eliminated word boundary information: a condition in which the spaces were replaced by numbers, a condition in which the spaces were removed but words were presented alternating in either uppercase or lowercase for the entire word, and an unspaced condition in which the spaces were removed and no additional demarcation information was added. The condition in which the spaces were replaced by numbers was identical to the manipulation used by Sheridan et al (2016) and resulted still in considerably faster reading times than the unspaced condition.…”