Reading minds in motion: Mouse tracking reveals transposed-character effects in Chinese compound word recognition

Abstract

This study investigated the development of character transposition effects during Chinese compound word recognition via computer mouse movements instead of the conventional key presses. Empirical evidence to reveal the impacts of vocabulary knowledge, grade level, and whole word frequency on Chinese transposed-character effect is lacking. In the present study, we measured the transposed-character effect in two groups of Taiwanese children (second and fourth graders) in a mouse-tracking lexical-decision task including nonwords derived from real words by transposing two characters (e.g., “習學” from “學習” [learning]) and control nonwords in which two characters are replaced (e.g., “以修”). Our results indicate that participants showed longer mouse movement times and larger spatial attraction in recognizing transposed-character nonwords than in replaced-character nonwords, suggesting that the dominant role of whole-word representation in processing Chinese compound words. Our results also further demonstrate that how the degree of character transposition was affected by vocabulary knowledge, grade level, and word frequency.

Syllable or phoneme? A mouse-tracking investigation of phonological units in Mandarin Chinese and English spoken word recognition.

“…In the present study, we used the mouse-tracking spoken word paradigm to examine whether bilingual listeners employ different phonological units depending on the language used in spoken word recognition. Over the past decade, mouse-tracking literature has suggested that hand movement trajectories recorded via a computer mouse in a wide range of linguistic tasks (e.g., lexical decision or spoken word recognition tasks) have provided insights into the temporally and spatially dynamic lexical activation and competition of written and spoken word recognition in monolingual and bilingual readers and listeners (e.g., Barca & Pezzulo, 2015; Lin & Lin, 2016, Lin et al, 2015, 2020; for written word recognition; see also Incera et al, 2020; Spivey et al, 2005; Zhao et al, 2011; for spoken word recognition). If the language-specific hypothesis of phonological units for bilingual listeners is the case, we should observe different levels of phonological competition when listeners process syllabic versus phonemic information during spoken word recognition in different languages (e.g., Chinese vs. English).…”