Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO)

Siegelman, Noam; Schroeder, Sascha; Acartürk, Cengiz; Ahn, Hee-Don; Alexeeva, Svetlana; Amenta, Simona; Bertram, Raymond; Bonandrini, Rolando; Brysbaert, Marc; Chernova, Daria; Fonseca, Sara Maria Da; Dirix, Nicolas; Duyck, Wouter; Fella, Argyro; Frost, Ram; Gattei, Carolina Andrea; Kalaitzi, Areti; Kwon, Nayoung; Lõo, Kaidi; Marelli, Marco; Papadopoulos, Timothy C.; Protopapas, Athanassios; Savo, Satu; Shalóm, Diego; Slioussar, Natalia; Stein, Roni; Sui, Longjiao; Taboh, Analí; Tønnesen, Veronica; Usal, Kerem Alp; Kuperman, Victor

doi:10.3758/s13428-021-01772-6

Cited by 53 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(67 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The aim of this corpus is to provide the field of L2 reading research with comparable high-quality and ecologically valid behavioral data across language backgrounds, collected using the same methods from comparable populations of readers. A parallel resource, MECO L1 (Siegelman et al, 2022), contains eyemovement data from the same participants reading in their respective L1, enabling a within-participant comparison of reading behavior in their L1 and L2. The expansion of the empirical base that the MECO corpus affords is expected to facilitate refinement and generalizability of existing theoretical accounts and provide quantifiable evidence on individual-and group-level factors predicting reading proficiency in L2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

Kuperman

Siegelman

Schroeder

et al. 2022

Stud Second Lang Acquis

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research into second language (L2) reading is an exponentially growing field. Yet, it still has a relatively short supply of comparable, ecologically valid data from readers representing a variety of first languages (L1). This article addresses this need by presenting a new data resource called MECO L2 (Multilingual Eye Movements Corpus), a rich behavioral eye-tracking record of text reading in English as an L2 among 543 university student speakers of 12 different L1s. MECO L2 includes a test battery of component skills of reading and allows for a comparison of the participants’ reading performance in their L1 and L2. This data resource enables innovative large-scale cross-sample analyses of predictors of L2 reading fluency and comprehension. We first introduce the design and structure of the MECO L2 resource, along with reliability estimates and basic descriptive analyses. Then, we illustrate the utility of MECO L2 by quantifying contributions of four sources to variability in L2 reading proficiency proposed in prior literature: reading fluency and comprehension in L1, proficiency in L2 component skills of reading, extralinguistic factors, and the L1 of the readers. Major findings included (a) a fundamental contrast between the determinants of L2 reading fluency versus comprehension accuracy, and (b) high within-participant consistency in the real-time strategy of reading in L1 and L2. We conclude by reviewing the implications of these findings to theories of L2 acquisition and outline further directions in which the new data resource may support L2 reading research.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

Kuperman

Siegelman

Schroeder

et al. 2022

Stud Second Lang Acquis

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Additionally, an increasing number of comparative literacy and numeracy studies draw community or representative samples for their hypothesis testing (see among many others [13,29,[59][60][61][62]. Finally, as undergraduate sampling relates to the WEIRD bias, we also highlight the growing body of cross-linguistically comparable samples in literacy research (among others, [18,[63][64][65][66].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…The English Lexicon Project, British Lexicon Project, and Dutch Lexicon Project are large scale collections of lexical decision and naming times for thousands of words in their respective languages and have been used to develop several theories of word processing [14][15][16]. Similarly, the Ghent Eye-tracking Corpus (GECO) and Multilingual Eye-tracking Corpus (MECO), which recorded eye-movement data while participants read longer texts, have been used to inform theories of reading behaviour and eye-movement control [17,18]. Each of these valuable and well cited datasets collected their data primarily or exclusively from university students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How representative are student convenience samples? A study of literacy and numeracy skills in 32 countries

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychological research, including research into adult reading, is frequently based on convenience samples of undergraduate students. This practice raises concerns about the external validity of many accepted findings. The present study seeks to determine how strong this student sampling bias is in literacy and numeracy research. We use the nationally representative cross-national data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to quantify skill differences between (i) students and the general population aged 16–65, and (ii) students and age-matched non-students aged 16–25. The median effect size for the comparison (i) of literacy scores across 32 countries was d = .56, and for comparison (ii) d = .55, which exceeds the average effect size in psychological experiments (d = .40). Numeracy comparisons (i) and (ii) showed similarly strong differences. The observed differences indicate that undergraduate students are not representative of the general population nor age-matched non-students.

show abstract

“…In Bayesian terms, the present study took the opposite approach, afforded by the availability of cross-linguistic data (Siegelman et al, 2022). We did not systematically manipulate sensory evidence, since word lengths in MECO texts were fairly representative of natural length distributions in respective languages and since the likelihood of evidence was kept constant through statistical control or data partitioning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A chinrest was used to minimize head movements. Each text appeared on a separate screen in 20- or 22-point mono-spaced font (the visual angle subtended by each character varied by the testing site) with 1.5 spacing (see Siegelman et al, 2022, for detailed description).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cross-linguistic study of spatial parameters of eye-movement control during reading.

Kuperman¹

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Current theories of oculomotor control in reading differ in their accounts of saccadic targeting. Some argue that targets for saccades are solely selected on the basis of the rapidly changing sensory input, whereas others additionally allow for the reader’s experiential biases to modulate saccade lengths. We investigated this debate using cross-linguistic data on text reading in 12 alphabetic languages from the Multilingual Eye-Movement Corpus (MECO) database. These languages vary widely in their word length distributions, suggesting that expected word lengths and corresponding biases toward optimal saccade lengths may also vary across readers of these languages. Regression analyses confirmed that readers of languages with longer words (e.g., Finnish) rather than shorter words (e.g., Hebrew) landed further into the word, even when sensory aspects relevant for saccade planning (e.g., word lengths) were controlled for. In the prevalent saccade type, a one-letter difference in mean word length between languages came with one-quarter-letter of a difference in initial landing position and saccade length, and a decrease in 1.5% in refixation probability. Interpreted in the Bayesian framework, the findings highlight the relevance of global language-wide settings for accounts of spatial oculomotor control and lead to testable predictions for further cross-linguistic research.

show abstract

Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO)

Cited by 53 publications

References 62 publications

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus

How representative are student convenience samples? A study of literacy and numeracy skills in 32 countries

A cross-linguistic study of spatial parameters of eye-movement control during reading.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About