The effect of word and character frequency on the eye movements of Chinese readers

Yan, Guoli; Hong-Jie, Tian; Bai, Xuejun; Rayner, Keith

doi:10.1348/000712605x70066

Cited by 158 publications

(215 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Low-frequency words were fixated longer and were less likely to be skipped, which is consistent with the results of previous studies (Tsai & McConkie, 2003;G. Yan et al, 2006;H.-M. Yang & McConkie, 1999).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

“…(1) For visual complexity (in terms of number of strokes), words composed of complicated characters were skipped less often and/or fixated longer than were words composed of less complicated characters (H.-M. Yang & McConkie, 1999). (2) For lexical frequency, fixation durations on high-frequency words and words with high-frequency constituent characters were shorter than fixation durations on low-frequency counterparts (G. Yan, Tian, Bai, & Rayner, 2006;H.-M. Yang & McConkie, 1999). Moreover, the character frequency effect was modulated by word frequency, being evident when word frequency was low but negligible when it was high.…”

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confidence: 98%

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Eye movements and parafoveal word processing in reading Chinese

Yen¹,

Tsai

Tzeng

et al. 2008

Memory & Cognition

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In two experiments, a parafoveal lexicality effect in the reading of Chinese (a script that does not physically mark word boundaries) was examined. Both experiments used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) and indicated that the lexical properties of parafoveal words influenced eye movements. In Experiment 1, the preview stimulus was either a real word or a pseudoword. Targets with word previews, even unrelated ones, were more likely to be skipped than were those with pseudowords. In Experiment 2, all of the preview stimuli had the same first character as the target. Target words with same-morpheme previews were fixated for less time than were those with pseudoword previews, suggesting that morphological processing may be involved in extracting information from parafoveal words in Chinese reading. Together, the two experiments dealing with how words are p processed in Chinese may provide some constraints on current computational models of reading.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 91%

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confidence: 98%

Eye movements and parafoveal word processing in reading Chinese

Yen¹,

Tsai

Tzeng

et al. 2008

Memory & Cognition

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“…In particular, words which have a low frequency of usage, and so are seldom encountered in written Chinese, are more likely to be fixated, and fixated for longer, than higher frequency words (e.g., Liversedge, Zang, Zhang, Bai, Yan, & Drieghe, 2014;Yan, Tian, Bai, & Rayner, 2006;Yang & McConkie, 1999). In addition, because Chinese characters occupy the same area of space, yet are created from a differing number of character strokes, their visual complexity varies.…”

Section: Eye Movements and Ageing In Chinese Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

Zang

Zhang

Bai

et al. 2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.

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“…Words with highfrequency characters were identified more quickly and accurately than words with lowfrequency characters. Yan, Tian, Bai, and Rayner (2006) independently varied the frequency of a target word and the characters composing it during a sentence reading task. Results showed that both word frequency and character frequency influenced the processing of the fixated word in first-pass reading times.…”

Section: N+2 Preview Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%