Word frequency and text complexity: an eye-tracking study of young Russian readers

Abstract

Although word frequency is often associated with the cognitive load on the reader and is widely used for automated text complexity assessment, to date, no eye-tracking data have been obtained on the effectiveness of this parameter for text complexity prediction for the Russian primary school readers. Besides, the optimal ways for taking into account the frequency of individual words to assess an entire text complexity have not yet been precisely determined. This article aims to fill these gaps. The study was conducted on a sample of 53 children of primary school age. As a stimulus material, we used 6 texts that differ in the classical Flesch readability formula and data on the frequency of words in texts. As sources of the frequency data, we used the common frequency dictionary based on the material of the Russian National Corpus and DetCorpus - the corpus of literature addressed to children. The speed of reading the text aloud in words per minute averaged over the grades was employed as a measure of the text complexity. The best predictive results of the relative reading time were obtained using the lemma frequency data from the DetCorpus. At the text level, the highest correlation with the reading speed was shown by the text coverage with a list of 5,000 most frequent words, while both sources of the lists - Russian National Corpus and DetCorpus - showed almost the same correlation values. For a more detailed analysis, we also calculated the correlation of the frequency parameters of specific word forms and lemmas with three parameters of oculomotor activity: the dwell time, fixations count, and the average duration of fixations. At the word-by-word level, the lemma frequency by DetCorpus demonstrated the highest correlation with the relative reading time. The results we obtained confirm the feasibility of using frequency data in the text complexity assessment task for primary school children and demonstrate the optimal ways to calculate frequency data.

Benchmark measures of eye movements during reading in Russian children

“…Sporadic eye-movement studies of reading in Russian children confirmed that word length and frequency influenced eye movements during reading and that the magnitude of these effects decreased with age (Alexeeva et al, 2020 for grades 3-4;Ivanov et al, 2010 for grades 1 and 4; Korneev et al, 2017;2018 for grades 2-3;Laposhina et al, 2022 for grades 1-3). Bezrukikh et al (2017) showed that the number of fixations and fixation durations, as well as saccades amplitudes, were related not only to the age of children (8-10 years old) but also to text complexity.…”

Online Review Helpfulness and Information Overload: The Roles of Text, Image, and Video Elements

“…For text, factors such as complexity, readability, word frequency, and non-literalness can influence the information load [42,43]. For images, perceptual complexity, visual complexity, and visual features might dictate the information load [44][45][46].…”

“…Previous research has yielded mixed results regarding the impact of product type on the helpfulness of online reviews. Some suggest the greater helpfulness of reviews for experience products due to their ability to mitigate uncertainty [12], while others argue for the supremacy of search products in this context, citing their reliance on objective information [42,43]. In light of the unique needs of experience products, we propose the following revised hypotheses: Hypothesis 3a (H3a).…”

Terminology use in school textbooks: corpus analysis

“…It is commonly assumed that a high rate of low-frequency words increases text complexity. The assumption has been proved by recent cutting-edge research (Laposhina et al, 2022). Second, despite their reference to specific real objects, terms lean towards conceptual abstraction (Tatarinov, 2006: 231-234).…”