Dataset Information

Semantic plausibility preferentially affects the semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading: evidence from an eye-movement study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Numerous studies have confirmed that skilled readers can benefit from a semantically related preview word (i.e., semantic preview benefit, SPB), suggesting that readers can extract semantic information from the parafovea to achieve efficient reading. It is still under debate whether the occurrence of this benefit is because of the semantic association between the preview and target words or because of the contextual fit of the preview word in the sentence context.

Methods

Two independent factors, preview plausibility (preview plausible/implausible) and semantic relatedness (semantically related/unrelated), were manipulated, and we further strictly controlled for syntactic plausibility in the present study.

Results

The results showed that the first-pass reading times of the target words were significantly shorter in the plausible preview condition than in the implausible preview condition. However, the main effect of semantic relatedness was found only in the gaze duration measure.

Discussion

The pattern of results revealed that semantic plausibility affects the semantic preview benefit preferentially in Chinese reading, supporting the contextual fit account. Our findings have implications for a better understanding of parafoveal processing and provide empirical support for the eye-movement control model.

SUBMITTER: Zhang L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10163867 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Semantic plausibility preferentially affects the semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading: evidence from an eye-movement study.

Zhang Lijuan L Liu Zhiwei Z Zhao Sainan S Wang Jingxin J

PeerJ 20230503

<h4>Background</h4>Numerous studies have confirmed that skilled readers can benefit from a semantically related preview word (<i>i.e</i>., semantic preview benefit, SPB), suggesting that readers can extract semantic information from the parafovea to achieve efficient reading. It is still under debate whether the occurrence of this benefit is because of the semantic association between the preview and target words or because of the contextual fit of the preview word in the sentence context.<h4>Me ...[more]

PMID: 37159829

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Project description:Prosodic constraints play a fundamental role during both spoken sentence comprehension and silent reading. In Chinese, the rhythmic pattern of the verb-object (V-O) combination has been found to rapidly affect the semantic access/integration process during sentence reading (Luo and Zhou, 2010). Rhythmic pattern refers to the combination of words with different syllabic lengths, with certain combinations disallowed (e.g., [2 + 1]; numbers standing for the number of syllables of the verb and the noun respectively) and certain combinations preferred (e.g., [1 + 1] or [2 + 2]). This constraint extends to the situation in which the combination is used to modify other words. A V-O phrase could modify a noun by simply preceding it, forming a V-O-N compound; when the verb is disyllabic, however, the word order has to be O-V-N and the object is preferred to be disyllabic. In this study, we investigated how the reader processes the rhythmic pattern and word order information by recording the reader's eye-movements. We created four types of sentences by crossing rhythmic pattern and word order in compounding. The compound, embedding a disyllabic verb, could be in the correct O-V-N or the incorrect V-O-N order; the object could be disyllabic or monosyllabic. We found that the reader spent more time and made more regressions on and after the compounds when either type of anomaly was detected during the first pass reading. However, during re-reading (after all the words in the sentence have been viewed), less regressive eye movements were found for the anomalous rhythmic pattern, relative to the correct pattern; moreover, only the abnormal rhythmic pattern, not the violated word order, influenced the regressive eye movements. These results suggest that while the processing of rhythmic pattern and word order information occurs rapidly during the initial reading of the sentence, the process of recovering from the rhythmic pattern anomaly may ease the reanalysis processing at the later stage of sentence integration. Thus, rhythmic pattern in Chinese can dynamically affect both local phrase analysis and global sentence integration during silent reading.

Project description:Unlike alphabetic language, Chinese is an ideographic language that does not contain spaces between words. Chinese readers must develop unique segmentation strategies for word recognition and reading comprehension. This study explored the role of format familiarity and semantic transparency in Chinese reading, reflecting the segmentation strategy and word processing characteristics in Chinese reading. Forty undergraduates read Chinese in familiar and unfamiliar formats, segmenting target words into semantically transparent and semantically opaque words. We used Eye Link 1000 to measure readers' eye movement index, which can reflect processing characteristics of word recognition in Chinese reading. The following findings were made: (1) Familiarity with the text format affects Chinese reading performance. The fixation time in the familiar direction is short, the skipping rate is high, and the processing efficiency is higher when the fixation point is close to the word center; (2) Semantic transparency affects the segmentation strategy and word processing in Chinese reading. Chinese readers have shorter fixation times, higher reading efficiency, and a fixation point closer to the word center when reading semantically transparent words. It supported the combined access model. (3) There is significant interaction in the early eye movement indicators, representing word processing characteristics in the early stage of Chinese reading. Specifically, the semantic-transparency effect appeared under a familiar rather than an unfamiliar format. The format familiarity effect was found in the early processing indexes of transparent words rather than opaque words. In the familiar format, since the meaning of the morpheme and the whole word of transparent words is consistent, readers tend to segment and process them as whole words. Due to the lack of reading experience, the reading difficulty increases in the unfamiliar format. To reduce the difficulty and promote comprehension, readers change their segmentation strategy and tend to segment transparent words by character. The word segmentation process slowed, and the format-familiarity effect did not show in the early indexes under unfamiliar format. More importantly, the separability of the lexical processing stages showed in the interaction of different indexes, which means that word segmentation and lexical recognition in Chinese reading may not be completely synchronized, supporting the Chinese E-Z reader model.

Dataset Information

Semantic plausibility preferentially affects the semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading: evidence from an eye-movement study.

Background

Methods

Results

Discussion

Publications

Semantic plausibility preferentially affects the semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading: evidence from an eye-movement study.

Similar Datasets

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