Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2024-04-25
Abstract： The visual complexity effect is considered one of the “big three effects” in word recognition. In alphabetic reading (such as English and German), visual complexity is primarily reflected in word length. It is well established that word length affects both the “when” and “where” decisions of eye movement control in alphabetic reading, yielding more and longer fixations on long words relative to short words. Some researchers have used changes in the word length effect with repeated reading as a measure of vocabulary learning outcomes in alphabetic reading. In written Chinese text, visual complexity of words is influenced not only by word length, similar to alphabetic reading, but also by the number of strokes in a word. In the present study, we conducted two parallel eye movement studies to examine how visual complexity (measured by words’ number of strokes and word length) influenced novel word learning in Chinese reading. We, specifically, investigated how visual complexity effects changed with cumulative learning. Two-character or three-character pseudowords were constructed as novel words. Each novel word was embedded into 15 highly constrained contexts for readers to establish novel lexical representations. There were five learning phases in our experiment. Participants read three sentences containing one novel word per learning phase, and their eye movements were recorded during sentence reading. In Experiment 1, we examined how the number of strokes in a word influenced word identification during Chinese word learning. The number of strokes in two-character novel words was manipulated as being either high or low. In Experiment 2, we examined how word length influenced novel word learning in Chinese reading by using two-character and three-character pseudowords as novel words. We included “Learning phase” as a continuous variable into the model to further examine how the visual complexity effects changed with exposure during Chinese novel word learning. We found that both the number of strokes and word length both influenced the “when” decision of eye movement control during Chinese novel word learning, the fewer the strokes and the shorter the word length, the shorter the fixations on novel words. In terms of the “where” decision, the number of strokes determined how long the saccade length into the novel words, which was more likely to relate to parafoveal processing, whilst word length influenced how long the saccade length leaving the novel words, which was highly related to foveal processing. We suggest that the process of stroke number information might influence the decision of where to land the eyes on novel words and the process of word length information might influence the decision of where to land the eyes when leaving novel words. We also found that the effect of number of strokes did not change significantly with exposure, indicating that the process of stroke number occurs both in the early and late stages of word learning, which supports “visual constraint hypothesis”. In contrast, the word length effect gradually decreases with exposure, showing the familiarity or learning effect, which aligns with “visual and linguistic constraint hypothesis”. These findings suggest a difference in the mechanisms of number of strokes and word length in Chinese reading accompanied by vocabulary acquisition: Stroke ßnumber might function as a form of low-level visual information, impacting the visual processing of vocabulary; while word length is more similar to the processing of linguistic information, affecting vocabulary processing at a higher level.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-11-07
Abstract： In natural unspaced Chinese reading, there are no salient visual word segmentation cues (like word spaces) to demark where words begin or end, yet Chinese skilled readers process a comparable amount of text content as efficiently as English readers, processing roughly 400 characters (equal to 260 words) per minute (see Liversedge et al., 2016). This raises the question of how Chinese readers engage in such word segmentation processing efficiently and effectively. Liang et al (2015, 2017) have shown that the positional probability information associated with a character, might offer a cue to the likely positions of word boundaries during Chinese incidental word learning. Given that they simultaneously manipulated the positional probabilities of both word initial and word final characters to make their manipulations maximally effective, it is unclear whether the initial, the final, or both constituent characters' positional probabilities contribute to the word segmentation and word identification effects during incidental word learning in Chinese reading. For this reason, in the present study, two parallel experiments were designed to directly investigate whether word initial, or word ending characters are more or less important for word segmentation word learning in Chinese reading. Two-character pseudowords were constructed as novel words. Each novel word was embedded into six high-constraint contexts for readers to establish novel lexical representation. In Experiment 1, we examined how word’s initial character positional probability influenced word segmentation and word identification during Chinese word learning. The initial character’s positional probability of target words was manipulated as being either high or low, and the final character was kept identical across the two conditions. In Experiment 2, an analogous manipulation was made for the final character of the target word to check whether the final character positional probability of two-character words can be used as word segmentation cue. We also included “Exposure” as a continuous variable into the model to further examine how the process of initial and final character positional probabilities changed with exposure. In both experiments, the participants spent shorter reading times and made fewer fixations on targets that comprised initial and final characters with high relative to low positional probabilities, suggesting that the positional probability of both the initial and final character of a word influences segmentation commitments in novel word learning in Chinese reading. Furthermore, both the effect of initial and final character positional probabilities of novel words decreased with exposure, showing the typical familiarity effect. To be somewhat different, the familiarity effect associated with the initial character had a slower time course relative to final character. This finding suggests that the role of word’s initial character positional probability is of more importance than that of final character’s, supporting the concurrent standpoint that word beginning constituents might be more influential than word final constituents during two-character word identification in Chinese reading. Based on the findings above, the time course of the process of initial and final character positional probabilities of novel words is argued and summarized as follows. During the early stage of word learning, both the statistical properties of word’s initial and final character positional probabilities are processed as segmentation cue. As lexical familiarity increases, the extent to such segmentation roles decreases, which initially begins with final character, and then occurs with initial character. Later, both the roles of initial and final character positional probabilities disappear with the establishment of a more-integral representation of novel words.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-10-19
Abstract： The part-list cuing effect refers to the phenomenon that when providing a subset of previously learned items as retrieval cues, people’s recall performance for the remaining items is often worse compared to when retrieval cues are absent. Memory research also showed that items with high value are generally better remembered than items with low value. However, it is unclear how the values of items affect the part-list cuing effect and its persistence. Through two experiments, this study investigated the influence of item value on the part-list cuing effect.
Experiment 1 employed a part-list cuing paradigm in a value-directed memory task. During the learning phase, participants were asked to study category exemplars which were assigned different values (1 or 10 points). Participants were then asked to make an old/new judgement after the presentation of part-list cues. Experiment 2 further manipulated the encoding condition (i.e., 1-study encoding vs. 2-study-test encoding) and the test schedule (i.e., immediate test vs. final test). In the 1-study condition, participants received only one study cycle, but went through two study–test cycles in the 2-study-test condition. The immediate test phase is the same as Experiment 1; the final test involved a final recognition test after a 5min distractor task.
Results from the two experiments collectively showed both the assigned values of cued and test items affected the item recognition performance: cue items with high value resulted in poorer target item recognition performance than those with low value; however, the recognition accuracy was higher for target items with high- than low-value, and the high-value target items were more sensitive to the presentation of part-list cuing. The emergence and persistence of part-list cuing was also modulated by item values. Under the 1-study condition, the high-value cues led to worse target item recognition regardless of the values of the target items, and this detrimental effect was observed in both immediate and final tests. In contrast, the low-value cues only caused poorer recognition of high-value targets in the immediate test. Under the 2-study-test condition, only high-value cues caused recognition impairment of the low-value targets in both immediate and delayed tests. The above results partially validate the two-mechanism account of part-list cuing, and also are a key supplement to this hypothesis: the role of part-list cuing on memory retrieval is not necessarily manifested as a lasting impairment in the low associative coding condition, or a transient impairment in the high associative coding condition, and the item value also influences the strength and persistence of the role of part-list cuing, and it is also necessary to take into account the role of item value when defining the role of part-list cuing on memory retrieval from the perspective of item associative encoding.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-09-04
Abstract：依恋的可塑性是成人依恋领域研究的重要主题，而探究依恋的可塑性首先需要了解依恋安全感是如何获得的。依恋控制系统模型指出，个体可以通过内部表征的方式通达依恋安全感。现有研究中常常将安全基地脚本作为这种内部表征方式，但忽视了另一种内部表征形式，即依恋相关情景模拟。先前有几项研究提出并证实了依恋相关情景模拟这一新的依恋安全感通达路径，但尚未回答：这一新的通达路径与已有路径相比有何特异性？其作用机制是什么？以及如何基于此进行依恋安全干预？本课题将通过三项研究来对这些问题进行考察：研究一考察依恋相关情景模拟对依恋安全的影响及其特异性；研究二从依恋相关情景模拟的内容和加工过程的角度考察其对依恋安全感的影响机制；研究三采用自然语言处理技术开发依恋相关情景模拟分类方法，并将其用于依恋安全干预。本课题将补充依恋控制系统模型的内容，能够解释依恋系统的情境灵活性，并为理解依恋的可塑性及进行依恋安全的干预带来启发。
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is one of the most promising functional neuroimaging tools in recent years due to its high ecological validity, low cost, and less sensitivity to head motions. Experimental paradigms of instructed lies and spontaneous lies have been used to verify the feasibility and accuracy of fNIRS technology in previous lying researches, and provided an opportunity to explore the cognitive mechanisms involved in lying among children, and the neural mechanisms of lying in real interaction scenarios. Future researches should use multimodal methods and indexes to enhance the accuracy of lie detection, and could explore the brain networks and the neural development of lying behavior to enrich research perspectives.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The ability to pre-process information from the parafovea, a hallmark component of skilled reading ( Blythe & Joseph, 2011), refers to the fact that readers visually and linguistically analyse upcoming words prior to their direct fixation. Previous findings regarding depth of pre-processing effects that are based on alphabetic language reading are mixed. One very important reason is that there is considerable variability in the length of target words in those studies conducted on alphabetic reading scripts. By contrast, it is possible to conduct such studies in Chinese to allow for parafoveal processing of text to be operationalized over characters without length variability. Chinese is a language with characteristics that are optimal for investigating parafoveal processing. The present project will take advantage of Chinese text characteristics to examine three aspects of parafoveal processing by using the eye tracking technique: (1) the first study aims at exploring how parafoveal load affects the spatial extent of pre-processing; (2) the second study attempts to examine whether and how foveal load influences the spatial extent and depth of pre-processing; on the basis of the first two studies, (3) the third study will investigate how reading skill modulates the spatial and depth effects of parafoveal processing, and also how reading efficiency interacts with spatial extent and depth of pre-processing. The findings of the current project will seek to illuminate currently controversial issues on parafoveal processing, and will be beneficial for examining and extending the current reading models of eye movement control (e.g., E-Z reader model, SWIFT model).
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The purpose of screening research is to provide a comprehensive understanding about the risks of early identification of autism spectrum disorder. This study comprehensively and systematically reviewed the commonly-used screening tools for early detection of autism in infants and preschool children. Under the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), we queried the topic “screening tools for autism spectrum disorder” against the three major literature retrieval databases (WOS, Scopus, PubMed) and obtained 175 articles, of which 35 articles and 18 corresponding screening tools were further evaluated to comply with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2) checklist. These tools were analyzed from the aspects of application level, psychometric and measurement properties, cultural adaptability, diagnostic criteria and classification accuracy. From the aspect of application level, the screening tools were categorized into three levels based on the types of screening samples, wherein Level- I screening tools, totaling up to 4, focus on general-purpose screening of population and the examination of other developmental disorders, and the evaluation is mainly based on the reports from parents; Level-II screening tools, totaling up to 8, were mainly based on the clinical reports from well-trained clinicians or the observations from the interactions between trained professionals and children; the hybrid-level screening tools, totaling up to 6, were based on the Level-I general population and the Level-II clinical samples. From the aspect of psychometric and measurement properties, existing studies only adopted several metrics of reliability and validity, e.g., internal consistency reliability, rater reliability, test-retest reliability and criterion validity, to evaluate the psychometric properties of screening tools,, whereas the other metrics such as split half reliability, measurement error, content validity, structural validity, cross-cultural validity and hypothesis test were seldom adopted except in only a few studies, and one-third studies did not carry out any psychometric evaluation, potentially resulting in the high-risk bias of QUADAS-2. From the aspect of cultural adaptability, the series of M-CHAT tools（M-CHAT, M-CHAT/F,M-CHAT-R/F）, subjected to extensive evaluation in multiple languages, have demonstrated obvious cultural adaptability, and were recognized as the most widely-used and the most famous screening tool based on parent reports. However, there is an increasing trend that screening tools developed to be localized to the culture and languages in communities or countries with scarce resources. From the aspect of diagnostic standards, the DSM-IV or DSM-IV-TR (accounting for 43%) were still used as the main reference standard instead of the DSM-5 manual (accounting for 34%). It was concluded from sensitivity and specificity that the tools for preschool children outperform those for infants in terms of classification accuracy. The tools rated as good level for infants include M-CHAT-R/F and PDQ-1, and the tools rated as excellent level for children include OERA and TIDOS, wherein M-CHAT-R / F is one of the most promising screening tools for estimating the risks of autism spectrum disorder. Lastly, we discussed the limitations of QUADAS-2 and the necessity of choosing stringent quality assessment measures and the importance of further validating these measurements.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Mind sports are competitive sports that aim at developing intelligence and involves multiple high-level cognitive processing. Deliberate practice enables the mind sports experts to exhibit steady expertise effects in domain-specific tasks. A review of previous research reveals that perception and memory are not only the basis of high-level cognitive functions, but also the central to the mind sports expert advantage. That is, the extraordinary performance of the mind sports experts is based on their perceptual and memory advantage. In this paper, we summarize the cognitive neural mechanisms through which expert perception and memory are influenced by the experience of mind sports from the perspective of cognitive neuropsychology to reveal the intrinsic processing patterns and neural mechanisms of the expertise effects in mind sports. Long-term training contributed to a stable holistic perceptual advantage in mind sports experts, as reflected by the fact that experts made a greater proportion of fixations between the pieces and completed the perceptual task with fewer fixations. This performance is consistent with the holistic model of image perception, in which the experts automatically process information about the entire game or board with a larger perceptual span, quickly locate task-relevant target areas with prior knowledge, and process abstract pieces relations in parallel. The temporo-parietal junction and fusiform gyri are the neural bases of a holistic perceptual process. Mind sports experts also have a stable memory advantage. Long-term training in mind sports allows experts to store not only a large amount of visual-spatial information in their long-term memory, but also more abstract and generalized knowledge. The Chunking and Template theory argues that experts rely primarily on concrete visuospatial information and therefore have an advantage when processing familiar stimuli. To explain experts' advantage in memorizing random chess stimuli, the SEEK theory suggests that experts have rich and flexible abstract knowledge and therefore have a memory advantage even when processing unfamiliar or stimuli that change presentation. The neural basis for the expert's advantage in accurate, rapid, and flexible memory is the synergistic activity of the medial temporal, frontotemporal, and frontoparietal regions. The existence of stable superior performance of experts in mind sports on tasks within the domain suggests that deliberate practice can improve experts' specific skills, supporting the view that training can promote intelligence. The following shortcomings still exist: 1) most studies have mainly focused on the chess domain, and it is still unclear whether the differences in cognitive demands of different mind sports lead to differences in extrinsic behavior and intrinsic neural basis; 2) existing studies have mainly examined the neural mechanisms underlying mind sports experts' advantage effects through univariate analysis based on voxels. Multi-voxel pattern analysis and representational similarity analysis can be used to explore the intrinsic neural basis more profoundly; 3) The timing of stimulus presentation has not been standardized and the adequacy of timing may lead to a decrease in group differentiation and a mix of other cognitive components. Multimodal studies can be conducted with high temporal resolution EEG and eye-movement recording to explore the dynamic cognitive neural mechanisms in depth. 4) due to a lack of long-term longitudinal study on how novices would become mind sports experts through deliberate practice, it remains incomplete regarding the cognitive performance and the trajectory of neural mechanism changes of mind sports experts. Future research can examine types of mind sports, innovative experimental paradigms, combined with measurement equipment and cognitive characteristics, to explore in depth and detail the neural mechanisms underlying the holistic perceptual advantage and memory advantage of mind sports experts, to provide a theoretical basis for artificial intelligence and skill training.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： It was generally found that pop music would do harm to the efficiency and accuracy of visual activity when it was as a kind of background music. This is called irrelevant sound effect, which means that the presence of irrelevant sound significantly impairs people’s performance on main visual task. Some researchers believe that the reason of this phenomenon is because the lyrics of the background pop music add extra workload to the working memory, which interferes with the visual task. Moreover, it was shown that the first language lyrics impaired participants’ performance more seriously than a strange language. To participants, the second language is less familiar than the first language but more than a strange language. So how about the irrelevant sound effect when lyrics are participants’ second language? And how about it when the visual task contains the second language? This study aimed to investigate the influence of different language lyrics to the visual memory task, the familiarity of whose materials was different in two experiments. It was hypothesized that there would be significant irrelevant sound effects in different language background musics with different language materials, and languages of the lyrics and materials would have reciprocal actions in both experiments. 180 participants from a university (90 for each experiment)who have passed CET6 (College English Test 6) attended this study to research the effect of lyrics in background pop music on short-term memory for familiar and unfamiliar Chinese and English words. There were three kinds of background sounds: no background sound, Chinese background pop music and English background pop music. In order to control effects caused by instruments, this research used Let it go sung by Yao Beina (Chinese) and Demi Lovato (English) as the background music in both two experiments. Only the refrain was used as music materials. In the first experiment, participants should remember 32 Chinese and 32 English familiar nouns and finish an instant recall task. In the second experiment, participants should remember 10 unfamiliar Chinese and 10 unfamiliar English nouns and finish an instant recognition task. Memory materials were displayed by Eprime 1.0 randomly. In the first experiment, the main effect of music types was significant, F(2,87) = 15.67, p < 0.00, ηp² = 0.15. The scores in the condition of no background music (M = 14.12) were significantly higher than the other two conditions. Participants’ scores in English background pop music (M = 12.50) were significantly higher than that in Chinese background pop music (M = 10.30). In the second experiment, the results showed that the scores in the condition of no background sound (M = 6.87) were still significantly higher than the other two conditions (M = 6.03 for Chinese music, M = 5.83 for English music). F(2,87) = 4.69, p < 0.05, ηp² = 0.05. The difference between two experiments was a significant reciprocal action in the second experiment, F(2,87) = 19.23, p < 0.01, ηp² = 0.20. The scores in the condition of Chinese background pop music were higher when the materials were Chinese words (M = 7.03), and the scores in the condition of English background pop music were higher when the materials were English words (M = 6.93). The conclusion was that lyrics in background music would effect the main visual task no mater what kind of lyrics’ language was, but different familiarity of languages indeed had different influences on the efficiency and accuracy of the main task. When memory words were familiar, the familiar language of lyrics would do more harm to the memory. While the words were unfamiliar, which means the task was more difficult, lyrics would do more harm to the memory of words that with the same language. The level of difficulty of the task and the familiarity of lyrics’ language both can effect the memory, while the former is more important.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In the process of reading, readers mainly obtain information through the fovea region—in particular, the parafovea plays an important role in information acquisition. Readers can obtain certain information from the parafovea through previewing processing, thus promoting the improvement of reading efficiency, which is called the “previewing effect”. The effect of the processing load of the fovea on the previewing effect of parafovea has become a popular research focus of late. For example, studies based on alphabetic languages have found that the previewing effect of the parafovea is greater for high-frequency and short words than for low-frequency and the long words. While Tibetan is an analphabetic language, it also belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and has many similarities with Chinese. However, it is still largely unclear how to reflect the above role in the process of Tibetan reading. Will it only show the common characters of alphabetic languages or will it show some Chinese characteristics? The present study aimed to provide experimental evidence to respond to these research questions. Two experiments were carried out on 119 Tibetan undergraduate students. More specifically, participants were asked to read Tibetan sentences and their eye movements during reading were recorded using an SR Research EyeLink 1000Plus eye tracker (sampling rate = 1000 Hz). Experiment 1 manipulated the fovea word frequency (i.e., high vs. low frequency) to investigate the word frequency effect and word frequency delay effect of fovea words in Tibetan reading. The results showed a word frequency effect and a word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading. Experiment 2 manipulated both fovea word frequency and parafovea previewing word types with the aid of boundary paradigm to investigate the previewing effect of parafovea and the effect of fovea word frequency on the previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading. The results showed a previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading and that, when compared with low-frequency fovea words, high-frequency fovea words had a greater promoting effect on the previewing effect of parafovea.The primary findings can be summarized as follows: (1) significant word frequency effect exists in Tibetan reading, which is reflected in the whole process of vocabulary processing; (2) there is a significant word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading, which runs through the whole process of vocabulary processing; (3) there is a significant previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading, through which the reader can extract speech and font information; and (4) in Tibetan reading, fovea word frequency affects the size of the previewing effect of parafovea—moreover, word frequency only affects the extraction of shape previewing information in the early stage of lexical processing, that is, the previewing effect of high-frequency words is greater under the condition of shape previewing.In conclusion, the effect of the processing load of the fovea on the previewing effect of parafovea shows the common characteristics of alphabetic languages in Tibetan reading. In addition, this study found that reading Tibetan involves the word frequency delay effect and the previewing effect of parafovea; these findings support the theory of parafovea sequence processing in the E-Z reader model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In alphabetic writing systems (such as English), the spaces between words mark the word boundaries, and the basic unit of reading is distinguished during visual-level processing. The visual-level information of word boundaries facilitates reading. Chinese is an ideographic language whose text contains no intrinsic inter-word spaces as the marker of word boundaries. Previous studies have shown that the basic processing unit of Chinese reading is also a word. However, findings remain inconsistent regarding whether inserting spaces between words in Chinese text promotes reading performance. Researchers have proposed that there may be a trade-off between text familiarity and the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether there was trade-off between text familiarity and facilitation of inter-word spaces. Before reading training, Experiment 1 was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates read Chinese sentences from right to left on four text conditions. The results showed faster reading speed and shorter total reading time for the inter-word spaced text. Based on this finding, 40 native Chinese undergraduates who did not participate in the first stage read Chinese sentences from right to left on four text conditions after ten-day reading training, then, the eye tracking data of participants during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 1. Experiment 1 verified there was trade-off between text familiarity and inter-word spaces’ facilitation in Chinese, then, the Experiment 2 examined the role of text familiarity and word frequency in vocabulary recognition. Forty students read Chinese sentences under familiar (from left to right) and unfamiliar (from right to left) texts. The target words were high frequency or low frequency. Using Eyelink 1000, the eye tracking data of 32 undergraduates during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 2. Second, right-to-left reading training was conducted over 10 days to improve right-to-left reading experience. Then, the eye tracking data of participants during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 2. The results in Experiment 1 showed that: (1) Before training, there was significant different between the total reading time and reading speed under unfamiliarity text, which were shorter reading time and faster reading speed in the inter-word spaced text. (2) After training, there was no significant difference between the total reading time and reading speed in the inter-word spaced text and unspaced text, which suggests that the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces in Chinese reading changed smaller. The results in Experiment 2 showed that: (1) The effect of text familiarity was significant. The fixated time was shorter, and the skipping rate was higher under the familiar text. (2) The main effect of word frequency was significant. Low-frequency words had longer fixation times and a higher skipping rate. (3) Right-to-left training improves reading performance from right to left. (4) The early indexes showed a significant interaction between text familiarity and word frequency. A word-frequency effect occurred under the familiar but not under the unfamiliar texts. The late indexes showed that the interaction between text familiarity and word-frequency was not significant. Results in experiment 1 suggested that there was trade-off between text familiarity and the facilitation of inter-word spaces, which supported the assumption in previous studies. In addition, results in experiment 2 showed the text familiarity may affect the early processing in vocabulary recognition. Based on the Chinese integrated reading model, the word segmentation and vocabulary recognition are unified processing. The E-Z reader model holds the opposite point. Combine the experiment 1 and experiment 2, research showed that word segmentation and vocabulary recognition may be sequential processing in Chinese reading, which provided empirical evidence for Chinese E-Z reader model rather than Chinese integrated model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： A controversial issue in eye movement research investigating reading concerns whether high-level information (e.g., syntactic category information) of parafoveal words can be obtained prior to fixation. Researchers have demonstrated that readers could stably extract syntactic category information from the parafoveal words during English reading, and such findings are in favor of parallel graded processing model (e.g., SWIFT model). Unlike English, Chinese are not rich in inflectional or derivational indicators to specify words’ syntactic properties. For example, there is no inflection with the verb 包装 (pack) no matter whether this action is going to happen or has already happened, nor whether this word is used as a verb or a noun. Therefore, parafoveal syntactic cues in Chinese may be limited relative to English, meaning that the extraction and use of such information when making syntactic commitments may be delayed. The present study was to explore whether parafoveal word class information could be extracted during Chinese reading. Using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), we manipulated the syntactic category (word class) of preview words to form three conditions: identical preview, preview with the same word class as the target word, preview with the different word class as the target word. 120 college students participated in the experiment. Eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink 1000 eye-tracker, and the recorded results (reading time and fixation probability) are the dependent variables. Participants were asked to read 45 sentences and answered a multiple-choice comprehension question if any (about 30%). Although participants were only exposed to each target word once, all sentences appeared in all preview conditions across three counterbalanced lists. The results showed that readers spent similar duration when they fixed the target word regardless of whether the word class of the preview word in the parafovea was same as the target word or not, and there was no significant difference in fixation probability between them. Supplementary Bayesian analysis supported the null hypothesis. Moreover, all fixation durations were significantly shorter for the identical condition than for the other two previews, skipping rate was higher for identical condition, and regression probabilities were lower for identical condition. The findings in the present study suggest that it is difficult for Chinese readers to extract high-level syntactic category information from parafoveal words. Our results provide support for the sequential attention shift model (e.g., E-Z reader model), which in favor of that high-level information processing occurs in the integration stage (I). The results provide evidence for improving computational models of eye movements about how to process lexical high-level information during reading.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： According to the lexical quality hypothesis, high proficient (fast) readers have well-specified lexical representations which enable automatic word identification and less context decoding, while low proficient (slow) readers rely on context for word identification during reading due to their imprecise lexical quality. In contrast, the predictive coding framework assumes that high proficient readers rely more on their reading experience to predict the upcoming context compared to low proficient readers. However, it is still unclear how skilled readers with different levels of reading proficiency rely on context information (e.g., predictability) for word processing during Chinese reading. In two experiments, the present study aimed to investigate individual differences in the use of predictability for word identification by using the eye-tracking technique. In Experiment 1, eye movements of fast and slow readers were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable or unpredictable target words, with the aim to investigate the differences in predictability effects between the two groups. Sixty pairs of predictable-unpredictable target words were selected, each of which was embedded into the same sentence frame. Fifteen fast and 15 slow readers, selected from a group of 66 participants based on their reading rates, participated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, parafoveal previews of the 60 predictable target words (identical word, visually similar pseudocharacter, unpredictable word or visually dissimilar pseudocharacter) were manipulated by using the boundary paradigm to explore how parafoveal preview influences processing of predictability information in the fast and slow readers. The eye movements of 20 fast and 20 slow readers, selected from a group of 80 participants on the basis of their reading rates, were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable target words with different previews in Experiment 2. The results showed that fast readers fixated shorter and less on the target words and were more likely to skip the target words than slow readers. In Experiment 1, although reliable predictability effects with shorter fixations for predictable than unpredictable words were found, it did not interact with reading groups. However, results in Experiment 2 showed robust parafoveal preview effects on the target word which interacted with reading groups. In particular, the two groups had the same first-pass fixation times (i.e., FFD, SFD, GD) at the target words under the identical previews, while slow readers made longer fixations than fast readers at the targets with unpredictable previews or unrelated previews. In addition, fast readers skipped target words at a similar probability under both the identical preview and unpredictable preview conditions, while slow readers were less likely to skip target words with unpredictable previews than identical previews. The current findings indicate that fast and slow readers rely on context to a similar degree during their foveal lexical processing whereas the two groups show different utilization of previews of the predictable word during their parafoveal processing. To be specific, compared to fast readers, slow readers are inefficient in activating the predictable word with a visually similar preview; moreover, slow readers are disturbed more by the unpredictable preview or the visually dissimilar preview for their lexical processing, which suggests that slow readers are less effective in suppressing unrelated or inappropriate information during reading. Such findings provide evidence for the lexical quality hypothesis and are in support of the linguistic-pro?ciency hypothesis related to individual differences in the E-Z reader model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Thematic role assignment refers to the on-line processing of assigning semantic roles, such as assigning agents or patients, to arguments (i.e., nouns) related to the verb. Linguistic information provided by arguments (e.g., word order, or case marking), as well as lexical argument representation of the verb is used for assigning thematic roles. The Extended Argument Dependency Model (eADM) suggests that argument cues utilized to assign semantic roles vary across languages. For rigid word-ordering languages (e.g., English) with case marking, readers adopt a position-based assignment, according to which the initial argument is usually analyzed as an agent. By contrast, thematic role assignment in unrestricted word-ordering languages (e.g., German, Italian, Japanese, and Turkish) with case marking exhibits a morphology-based strategy. The eADM model also predicts a reversal of thematic role assignment when the verb’s argument representation contradicts with the argument cues, which is based on verb information and induces additional processing costs. Considerable evidence has demonstrated the language-specific weight on argument cues. However, it is unknown whether word order strongly affects thematic role assignment in Chinese (a rigid-ordering language with case marking) reading. In addition, the reanalysis of thematic roles proposed by the eADM model has only been tentatively explored in Spanish. Whether such reanalysis processing exists in other languages, especially in non-alphabetic languages like Chinese, is still lack of evidence. The present study examined the reliance on word order information in the existence of case marking information and the reanalysis of thematic roles when argument representation of the verb was in contradiction with cues of arguments in Chinese. The sentence structure (centered or preposed) and the type of control verb (subject-control or object-control) were manipulated. Sentences in the centered structure provided information of word order and case marking, while sentences in the preposed structure only provided case marking information. Argument representation of object-control verbs incompatible with the information of arguments would lead to a re-assignment of semantic roles. The argument representation of subject-control verbs compatible with the argument cues would cause no reanalysis. Fifty-four pairs of control verbs were selected, each of which was embedded into a centered-structure sentence and a preposed-structure sentence. Eye movements of 24 native Chinese speakers were recorded by the Eyelink Ⅱ eye tracker. Each participant read 54 experimental sentences, followed by a comprehension question. The results showed that the preposed structure sentences caused longer second-pass reading time and more total incoming regressions in the first noun, longer first-pass reading time in the second noun, and longer regression path duration in the verb region than the centered-structure sentences, which suggested the strategy of position-based assignment for Chinese readers. There were robust main effects of the types of control verb, in that longer first pass reading time, regression path duration, and total incoming regressions were observed in the verb region, and longer second-pass reading time and total incoming (outgoing) regressions were found in the post-verb region in the object control verb condition than in the subject control verb condition. These results indicated that the mismatch of verb argument representation and argument cues contributed to an extra processing load. In addition, interactions between sentence structure and types of control verb were also observed, with longer second-pass reading time and total incoming regression in the second noun and longer second-pass reading time in the verb region in the centered-structure sentences containing object control verbs than those containing subject control verbs. There were longer first-pass reading time and regression path duration in the post-verb region in the preposed-structure sentences in the object-control verb condition than in the subject-control verb condition. In conclusion, these findings indicate that Chinese readers depend on word order information heavily to assign thematic roles even when there is case marking; also, the mismatch between cues of arguments and the argument representation of control verbs in Chinese reading causes reanalysis of thematic roles. Such findings are in line with the claim of the eADM model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2022-06-27
Abstract： According to the lexical quality hypothesis, high proficient (fast) readers have well-specified lexical representations which enable automatic word identification and less context decoding (Andrews, 2015; Perfetti, 2007), while low proficient (slow) readers rely on context for word identification during reading due to their imprecise lexical quality. In contrast, the predictive coding framework assumes that high proficient readers rely more on their reading experience to predict the upcoming context compared to low proficient readers (Hawelka et al., 2015). However, it is still unclear how skilled readers with different levels of reading proficiency rely on context information (e.g., predictability) for word processing during Chinese reading. In two experiments, the present study aimed to investigate individual differences in the use of predictability for word identification by using the eye-tracking technique. In Experiment 1, eye movements of fast and slow readers were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable or unpredictable target words, with the aim to investigate the differences in predictability effects between the two groups. Sixty pairs of predictable-unpredictable target words were selected, each of which was embedded into the same sentence frame. Fifteen fast and 15 slow readers, selected from a group of 66 participants based on their reading rates, participated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, parafoveal previews of the 60 predictable target words (identical word, visually similar pseudocharacter, unpredictable word or visually dissimilar pseudocharacter) were manipulated by using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to explore how parafoveal preview influences processing of predictability information in the fast and slow readers. The eye movements of 20 fast and 20 slow readers, selected from a group of 80 participants on the basis of their reading rates, were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable target words with different previews in Experiment 2. The results showed that fast readers fixated shorter and less on the target words and were more likely to skip the target words than slow readers. In Experiment 1, although reliable predictability effects with shorter fixations for predictable than unpredictable words were found, it did not interact with reading groups. However, results in Experiment 2 showed robust parafoveal preview effects on the target word which interacted with reading groups. In particular, the two groups had the same first-pass fixation times (i.e., FFD, SFD, GD) at the target words under the identical previews, while slow readers made longer fixations than fast readers at the targets with unpredictable previews or unrelated previews. In addition, fast readers skipped target words at a similar probability under both the identical preview and unpredictable preview conditions, while slow readers were less likely to skip target words with unpredictable previews than identical previews. The current findings indicate that fast and slow readers rely on context to a similar degree during their foveal lexical processing whereas the two groups show different utilization of previews of the predictable word during their parafoveal processing. To be specific, compared to fast readers, slow readers are inefficient in activating the predictable word with a visually similar preview; moreover, slow readers are disturbed more by the unpredictable preview or the visually dissimilar preview for their lexical processing, which suggests that slow readers are less effective in suppressing unrelated or inappropriate information during reading. Such findings provide evidence for the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007) and are in support of the linguistic-pro?ciency hypothesis related to individual differences in the E-Z reader model (Reichle et al., 2013).
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2022-05-08
Abstract：
In alphabetic writing systems (such as English), the spaces between words mark the word boundaries, and the basic unit of reading is distinguished during visual-level processing. The visual-level information of word boundaries facilitates reading. Chinese is an ideographic language whose text contains no intrinsic inter-word spaces as the marker of word boundaries. Previous studies have shown that the basic processing unit of Chinese reading is also a word. However, findings remain inconsistent regarding whether inserting spaces between words in Chinese text promotes reading performance. Researchers have proposed that there may be a trade-off between text familiarity and the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces.
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether there was trade-off between text familiarity and facilitation of inter-word spaces. Before reading training, Experiment 1 was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates read Chinese sentences from right to left on four text conditions. The results showed faster reading speed and shorter total reading time for the inter-word spaced text. Based on this finding, 40 native Chinese undergraduates who did not participate in the first stage read Chinese sentences from right to left on four text conditions after ten-day reading training, then, the eye tracking data of participants during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 1. Experiment 1 verified there was trade-off between text familiarity and inter-word spaces’ facilitation in Chinese, then, the Experiment 2 examined the role of text familiarity and word frequency in vocabulary recognition. Forty students read Chinese sentences under familiar (from left to right) and unfamiliar (from right to left) texts. The target words were high frequency or low frequency. Using Eyelink 1000, the eye tracking data of 32 undergraduates during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 2. Second, right-to-left reading training was conducted over 10 days to improve right-to-left reading experience. Then, the eye tracking data of participants during Chinese reading were recorded in Experiment 2.
The results in Experiment 1 showed that: (1) Before training, there was significant different between the total reading time and reading speed under unfamiliarity text, which were shorter reading time and faster reading speed in the inter-word spaced text. (2) After training, there was no significant difference between the total reading time and reading speed in the inter-word spaced text and unspaced text,which suggests that the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces in Chinese reading changed smaller. The results in Experiment 2 showed that: (1) The effect of text familiarity was significant. The fixated time was shorter, and the skipping rate was higher under the familiar text. (2) The main effect of word frequency was significant. Low-frequency words had longer fixation times and a higher skipping rate. (3) Right-to-left training improves reading performance from right to left. (4) The early indexes showed a significant interaction between text familiarity and word frequency. A word-frequency effect occurred under the familiar but not under the unfamiliar texts. The late indexes showed that the interaction between text familiarity and word-frequency was not significant.
Results in experiment 1 suggested that there was trade-off between text familiarity and the facilitation of inter-word spaces, which supported the assumption in previous studies. In addition, results in experiment 2 showed the text familiarity may affect the early processing in vocabulary recognition. Based on the Chinese integrated reading model, the word segmentation and vocabulary recognition are unified processing. The E-Z reader model holds the opposite point. Combine the experiment 1 and experiment 2, research showed that word segmentation and vocabulary recognition may be sequential processing in Chinese reading, which provided empirical evidence for Chinese E-Z reader model rather than Chinese integrated model.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-12-26
Abstract： "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-25
Abstract： In the process of reading, readers mainly obtain information through the fovea region—in particular, the parafovea plays an important role in information acquisition. Readers can obtain certain information from the parafovea through previewing processing, thus promoting the improvement of reading efficiency, which is called the “previewing effect”. The effect of the processing load of the fovea on the previewing effect of parafovea has become a popular research focus of late. For example, studies based on alphabetic languages have found that the previewing effect of the parafovea is greater for high-frequency and short words than for low-frequency and the long words. While Tibetan is an analphabetic language, it also belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and has many similarities with Chinese. However, it is still largely unclear how to reflect the above role in the process of Tibetan reading. Will it only show the common characters of alphabetic languages or will it show some Chinese characteristics? The present study aimed to provide experimental evidence to respond to these research questions. Two experiments were carried out on 119 Tibetan undergraduate students. More specifically, participants were asked to read Tibetan sentences and their eye movements during reading were recorded using an SR Research EyeLink 1000Plus eye tracker (sampling rate = 1000 Hz). Experiment 1 manipulated the fovea word frequency (i.e., high vs. low frequency) to investigate the word frequency effect and word frequency delay effect of fovea words in Tibetan reading. The results showed a word frequency effect and a word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading. Experiment 2 manipulated both fovea word frequency and parafovea previewing word types with the aid of boundary paradigm to investigate the previewing effect of parafovea and the effect of fovea word frequency on the previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading. The results showed a previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading and that, when compared with low-frequency fovea words, high-frequency fovea words had a greater promoting effect on the previewing effect of parafovea. The primary findings can be summarized as follows: (1)significant word frequency effect exists in Tibetan reading, which is reflected in the whole process of vocabulary processing; (2)there is a significant word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading, which runs through the whole process of vocabulary processing; (3)there is a significant previewing effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading, through which the reader can extract speech and font information; and(4)in Tibetan reading, fovea word frequency affects the size of the previewing effect of parafovea—moreover, word frequency only affects the extraction of shape previewing information in the early stage of lexical processing, that is, the previewing effect of high-frequency words is greater under the condition of shape previewing. In conclusion, the effect of the processing load of the fovea on the previewing effect of parafovea shows the common characteristics of alphabetic languages in Tibetan reading. In addition, this study found that reading Tibetan involves the word frequency delay effect and the previewing effect of parafovea; these findings support the theory of parafovea sequence processing in the E-Z reader model.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-08
Abstract： The ability to pre-process information from the parafovea, a hallmark component of skilled reading (Blythe, & Joseph, 2011), refers to the fact that readers visually and linguistically analyse upcoming words prior to their direct fixation. Previous findings regarding depth of pre-processing effects that are based on alphabetic language reading are mixed. One very important reason is that there is considerable variability in the length of target words in those studies conducted on alphabetic reading scripts. By contrast it is possible to conduct such studies in Chinese to allow for parafoveal processing of text to be operationalized over characters without length variability. Chinese is a language with characteristics that are optimal for investigating parafoveal processing. The present project will take advantage of Chinese text characteristics to examine three aspects of parafoveal processing by using the eye tracking technique: (1) the first study aims at exploring how parafoveal load affects the spatial extent of pre-processing, (2) the second study attempts to examine whether and how foveal load influences the spatial extent and depth of pre-processing; On the basis of the first two studies, (3) the third study will investigate how reading skill modulates the spatial and depth effects of parafoveal processing, and also how reading efficiency interacts with spatial extent and depth of pre-processing. The findings of the current project will seek to illuminate currently controversial issues on parafoveal processing, and will be beneficial for examining and extending the current reading models of eye movement control (e.g., E-Z reader model, SWIFT model)." "
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-06
Abstract： Parafoveal pre-processing contributes to highly efficient reading for skilled readers (Ashby et al., 2012; Rayner, 2009). Research has demonstrated that high-skilled or fast readers extract more parafoveal information from a wider parafoveal region more efficiently compared to less-skilled or slow readers (e.g., Ashby et al., 2012; Chace et al., 2005; Rayner et al., 2010; Veldre & Andrews, 2015a). It is argued that individual differences in parafoveal preview are due to high-skilled or fast readers focusing less of their attention on foveal word processing than less-skilled or slow readers (Rayner, 1986; Veldre & Andrews, 2014). In other words, foveal processing difficulty might modulate an individual’s amount of parafoveal preview (Foveal Load Hypothesis, Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). However, few studies have provided evidence in support of this claim. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore whether and how foveal lexical processing load modulates parafoveal preview of readers with different reading speeds (a commonly used measurement of reading skill or reading proficiency). By using a three-minute reading comprehension task, 28 groups of fast and slow readers were selected from 300 participants (234 were valid) according to their reading speed in the current study. Participants were then asked to read sentences while their eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink 1000 eyetracker. Each experimental sentence contained a pre-target word that varied in lexical frequency to manipulate foveal processing load (low load: high frequency; high load: low frequency), and a target word manipulated for preview (identical or pseudo-character) within the boundary paradigm (Rayner 1975). Global analyses showed that, although fast readers had similar accuracy of reading comprehension to slow readers, they had shorter reading times, longer forward saccades, made less fixations and regressions, and had higher reading speeds compared to slow readers, indicating that our selection of fast and slow readers was highly effective. The pre-target word analyses showed that there was a main effect of word frequency on first-pass reading times, indicating an effective manipulation of foveal load. Additionally, there was an interactive effect between reading group and word frequency for first fixation and single fixation durations, showing that fast readers fixated high frequency pre-target words for less time than low frequency pre-target words, while slow readers made similar duration fixations on the high and low frequency pre-target words. However, the target word analyses did not show any three-way or two-way interactions for the first-pass reading times as well as for skipping probability. To be specific, the first-pass reading times were shorter at the target word with identical previews in relation to pseudocharacter previews (i.e. preview benefit effects); importantly, similar size effects occurred for both fast readers and slow readers. The findings in the present study suggest that lexical information from the currently fixated word can be extracted and can be used quickly for fast readers, while such information is used later for slow readers. This, however, does not result in more (or less) preview benefit for fast readers in relation to slow readers. In conclusion, foveal lexical processing does not modulate preview benefit for fast and slow readers, and the present results provide no support for the Foveal Load Hypothesis. Our findings of foveal load effects on parafoveal preview for fast and slow readers cannot be readily explained by current computational models (e.g., E-Z Reader model and SWIFT model).
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