Flexible parafoveal encoding of character order supports word predictability effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements

Abstract

Several eye-movement studies have revealed flexibility in the parafoveal processing of character-order information in Chinese reading. In particular, studies show that processing a two-character word in a sentence benefits more from parafoveal preview of a nonword created by transposing rather than replacing its two characters. One issue that has not been investigated is whether the contextual predictability of the target word influences this processing of character order information. However, such a finding would provide novel evidence for an early influence of context on lexical processing in Chinese reading. Accordingly, we investigated this issue in an eye-movement experiment using the boundary paradigm and sentences containing two-character target words with high or low contextual predictability. Prior to the reader's gaze crossing an invisible boundary, each target word was shown normally (i.e. a valid preview) or with its two characters either transposed or replaced by unrelated characters to create invalid nonword previews. These invalid previews reverted to the target word once the reader's gaze crossed the invisible boundary. The results showed larger preview benefits (i.e. a decrease in fixation times) for target words following transposedcharacter than substituted-character previews, revealing a transposed-character effect similar to that in previous research. In addition, a word predictability effect (shorter fixation times for words with high than low predictability) was observed following both valid and transposed-character previews, but not substituted-character previews. The findings therefore reveal that context can influence an early stage of lexical processing in Chinese reading during which character order is processed flexibly.

The transposed-word effect revisited: the role of syntax in word position coding

“…Moreover, the transposed-word effect is not specific to the dependent measures obtained in the grammatical decision task. Mirault et al ( 2020 ) reported transposed-word effects in a measure of total reading time obtained with eye-movement recordings, and Chang et al ( 2020 ) found a transposed-character effect in Chinese in a natural sentence reading experiment with eye-movement recordings. Finally, as already noted above, Pegado and Grainger ( 2020 ) found transposed-word effects in a same-different matching task in which participants were presented with two sequences of words and simply had to judge whether the two sequences were the same or not.…”

Does omitting the accent mark in a word affect sentence reading? Evidence from Spanish

“…A more ecologically valid paradigm is to have participants reading sentences while their eye movements are recorded. Keep in mind that, in sentence reading, readers would extract parafoveal information from the upcoming words (e.g., see Angele et al, 2013; Rayner et al, 2012, for reviews; see Chang et al, 2020, for evidence in Chinese; see Pagán et al, 2016, for evidence with developing readers). Furthermore, eye movement data may inform us on the time course of the effect (e.g., if the effect is already present in the duration of first-pass fixations on the target word or only later in lexical processing).…”

The sequence effect: Character position processing in Chinese words

“…This function enables us to distinguish 领带 ( necktie ) from 带领 ( lead ). Although many studies revealed the obvious transposed-character effect, they also confirmed the importance of Chinese character position processing, showing that the transposed-character non-words were, respectively, longer than base words with two characters or four characters in lexical decision tasks or sentence reading ( Gu et al, 2015 ; Gu and Li, 2015 ; Xu and Sui, 2018 ; Yang et al, 2019 , 2020 , 2021 ; Chang et al, 2020 ). However, the position processing pattern of characters within a word is still unclear and worth exploring.…”