Eye-movement benchmarks in Heritage Language reading

Abstract

This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-year-old children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient HSs in exhibiting lower skipping probabilities, higher fixation counts, and larger frequency effects. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the weaker links account of bilingual language processing as well as the divergent attainment theory of HL.

Monolingual and Bilingual Reading Processes in Russian: An Exploratory Scanpath Analysis

“…In general, our results confirm the predictions of the divergent attainment trajectory of heritage‐language development (Benmamoun et al, 2013; Montrul, 2008; Polinsky & Scontras, 2020; Scontras et al, 2015) and findings from previous reading studies (Cop et al, 2015; Parshina et al, 2021). The scanpaths of monolingual speakers were consistent with the fluent scanpath reading process, whereas those of HSs depended on their proficiency.…”

“…Our recent study (Parshina, Laurinavichyute, & Sekerina, 2021), in which we investigated conventional eyetracking measures of reading in Cyrillic by adult HSs and L2 learners of Russian who live in the United States, confirmed these predictions. We compared the eye movements of bilinguals with those observed in monolingual 8-year-old children (Korneev, Matveeva, & Akhutina, 2017) and adults (Laurinavichyute, Sekerina, Alexeeva, Bagdasaryan, & Kliegl, 2019).…”

“…Participants were recruited from three sites: an urban university in New York City (HSs and L2 learners) and a public school and a university in Moscow, Russia (children and monolingual adults, respectively). None of the HSs in this or the previous study (Parshina et al, 2021) had more than four weeks of formal instruction in Russian. All monolingual adult participants were skilled readers of Russian (i.e., university undergraduates), reported Russian as their native language, and did not identify as speaking any other language fluently.…”

“…There were 120 participants distributed across four groups: 30 monolingual Russian‐speaking adults (13 women; M age = 23.3 years, range = 19–28), 30 monolingual Russian‐speaking second graders (11 girls; M age = 8.5 years, range = 8–9), 30 English‐dominant HSs of Russian (14 women; M age = 17.5 years, range = 13–24; M age_of_arrival = 4.3 years), and 30 English‐dominant L2 learners of Russian (21 women; M age = 21.2 years, range = 16–43). The data for 17 HSs and all the L2 learners ( n = 30) came from Parshina et al (2021) and were reanalyzed for the present study, using the scanpath approach. The rest of the data were new, namely, 30 monolingual speakers and 13 high‐proficiency HSs.…”

“…In the present study, we took a step further from Parshina et al (2021) by using the scanpath approach to investigate qualitative differences and similarities in global eye movement patterns among the four groups of Russian speakers (as opposed to the quantitative evaluation of word-level eye-tracking measures in Parshina et al 's study). Although these groups were the same as in Parshina et al 's study, to be able to compare the qualitative characteristics of the global eye movement patterns between groups, it was critical that all participants read the same sentences (they had read a different set of sentences in the previous study).…”