Rotated Text Processing In Chinese:Evidence From Eye Movements

Among all the information we obtained everyday,80percent of it is getting via our visual system. Getting information from reading is an important skill for our human being's daily life. Acquiring visual features from visual perception processing is the very first step of completing reading task. Visual features of printed text affects the ease of its recognition. Previous studies altered texts'visual features and found that spaces manipulation, size alternating, font alternating and other manipulations influenced reading performance differently. The-visual features of texts could also be changed by rotating the texts while whole word shape and spatial relationship are both manipulated. Such manipulation helps with some theoretical issues such as the relationship between visual processing and lexical processing, the basic processing unit and so on. Therefore, the role of text rotation in word identification and sentence reading during Chinese reading was investigated by mamipulating Chinese characters'rotation magnitudes and directions. Basic processing unit in Chinese reading was discussed as well. We assumed that those data could make some contribution to model the eye movement control during Chinese reading.Two studies including five experiments were carried out.Two experiments were included in Study1. Chinese rotated characters and words recognition was examined by recording participants'lexical decision responses. Whether the influence of rotation on character and word recognition was modulated by character or word frequency was also explored. In addtion, mental representation of Chinese two-character words was discussed. Lexical decision task was adopted in both experiments. In Experiment1, rotated single characters with high and low frequency were used while recording participants'lexical decision responses. Direction and angle of rotation were also manipulated (clockwise, or anti-clockwise;30,60or90degrees). In Experiment2, rotated two-character words with high and low frequency were used while recording participants' lexical decision responses. Direction and angle of rotation were also manipulated (all clockwise, all anti-clockwise, alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise;30,60or90degrees). In addition, participants' lexical decision responses in normal upright condition were also recorded as baseline.Three experiments were included in Study2. To examine the influence on Chinese two-character compound words processing of rotation, praticipants' eye movements were recorded while reading sentences containing a rotated target word in each to test the basic processing unit in Chinese reading, and to further test the reliablity of sinicization of E-Z Reader model. Whether the influence of rotation on word processing was modulated by word frequency was also discussed. Sentences reading task was used in all three experiments. The target words were all two-character words, and their word frequency and transparency were manipulated. In Experiment3, only the word frequency was manipulated, while in Experiment4&5, high and low transparent words were selected respectively while also manipulating word frequency. Direction and angle of rotation were also manipulated (all clockwise, all anti-clockwise, alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise;30or60degrees). In addition, participants' eye movements in normal upright condition were also recorded as baseline.To summarize, the findings of the two studies are as follows:(1) Participants' lexical decision response times increased with increasing rotation degree, the increase of low frequency characters and words was greater than high ones. Participants' eye movement measures increased with increasing rotation degree of general and non-transparent two-character words, the increase of low frequency words was greater than high ones. Participants' eye movement measures also increased with increasing rotation degree of transparent two-character words while these increases did not differ between high and low frequency words. These results suggested that the difficulty of Chinese character and word processing increased along with the visual distortion by increasing rotation magnitude, especially for low frequency characters and words.(2) Participants' lexical decision response times and eye movement measures both increased larger in alternating rotation condition compared with consistent rotation condition. These results suggested the difficulty of Chinese two-character words processing increased in all rotation direction conditions. The disruptions on word processing in nonconsistent rotation conditions was greater than those in consistent rotation conditions.Following conclusions was made:(1) Chinese readers could process and recognize rotated Chinese characters and words, this reflects the flexibility of visual processing of Chinese readers.(2) Mental rotation was included during Chinese rotated text processing. That is to say, readers anti-rotated the rotated characters to upright and than recognized. This anti-rotation processing interupts character and word recognition, thus increases the difficulties.(3) Significant visual characteristics of printed texts reduce the ease with which they can be identified, especially for low frequency words.(4) Readers could recognize the whole word via familiarity check stage during Chinese word recognition and reading processing. This suggests that the basic processing unit in Chinese reading is word, at least to high frequency words.Overall, both low-level visual features and the characteristic of word-based processing of Chinese reading should be considered during constructing eye movement control model in Chinese reading.