Effects of adults aging on word encoding in reading Chinese: evidence from disappearing text

Abstract

The effect of aging on the process of word encoding for fixated words and words presented to the right of the fixation point during the reading of sentences in Chinese was investigated with two disappearing text experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that only the 40-ms onset disappearance of word n disrupted young adults’ reading performance. However, for old readers, the disappearance of word n caused disruptions until the onset time was 120 ms. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the disappearance of word n + 1 did not cause disruptions to young adults, but these conditions made old readers spend more time reading a sentence compared to the normal display condition. These results indicated a reliable aging effect on the process of word encoding when reading Chinese, and that the encoding process in the preview frame was more susceptible to normal aging compared to that in the fixation frame. We propose that sensory, cognitive, and specific factors related to the Chinese language are important contributors to these age-related differences.

The Trade-Off Between Format Familiarity and Word-Segmentation Facilitation in Chinese Reading

“…According to the following criteria ( Rayner et al, 2006 ; Bai et al, 2008 ; Rayner, 2009 ; Liu et al, 2017 ; Wang et al, 2018 ), the analysis of fixation durations excluded data shorter than 80 ms and longer than 800 ms. The data were excluded if: (1) participants pressed the key incorrectly during the experiment, which resulted in an interruption; (2) data were lost due to accidental factors (such as head movement); (3) there were fewer than four gazes; (4) the data were outside three standard deviations.…”

Is There a Genetic Confound in the Relation of Home Literacy Environment with Children's Reading Skills? A Familial Control Method Approach

“…First, to examine the associations between parents' reading, HLE, and children's emergent literacy and reading skills, we estimated an intergenerational model (Figure 1). We constructed our hypothesized model based on the home literacy model (Sénéchal, 2006;Sénéchal et al, 2017;Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002, 2014 and the findings from existing HLE studies in Chinese (e.g., Liu et al, 2018;Wang & Liu, 2021;Zhang et al, 2020). To approximate the genetic transmission of maternal and paternal traits to their child's trait, equality constraints were imposed on analogous paths from mother's and father's reading to children's emergent literacy and reading skills (see van Bergen et al, 2015, for a similar approach).…”

“…Thus, including ALR in this study would help us further clarify its role in children's reading skills. Fourth, from a theoretical point of view, neither study measured children's reading comprehension, despite the theoretical links between HLE and children's reading comprehension proposed in the home literacy model (e.g., Inoue et al, 2018;Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002, 2014. Finally, neither study included measures of both emergent literacy and reading skills along with HLE in the same model, and therefore we do not know if the effects of parents' reading on children's reading are mediated by children's emergent literacy skills.…”

“…The purpose of this longitudinal study was to test the premises of the home literacy model (Sénéchal, 2006;Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002, 2014 using the Familial Control Method (Hart et al, 2021). More specifically, we examined whether different components of HLE (code-related HLE activities, meaning-related HLE activities, and access to literacy resources; assessed when children were attending kindergarten) predict emergent literacy skills (pinyin letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary; assessed in kindergarten), word reading (assessed in kindergarten), and reading comprehension (assessed in Grade 1), after controlling for parents' reading skills and SES (assessed when their children were in kindergarten).…”

“…This task was developed by Liu (2014) and required parents to read as accurately as possible a list of 100 Chinese words ordered in increasing difficulty (based on both the frequency and naming error rates of university students in Liu et al 's [2007]) study. The task was discontinued after six consecutive errors, and a participant's score was total number correct (max = 100).…”