Lexical Transposition Effect In Chinese Reading

For a long time,the distribution of attention has been the focus of debate in the psychology of reading.The view of sequence processing holds that the distribution of attention in reading is sequential,and readers can process only one word at a time.The view of parallel processing holds that the distribution of attention in reading is parallel,and readers can process multiple words at a time.Correspondingly,the view of sequence processing holds that the position-coding of words in sentence text is also sequential,conducive to the formation of sentence representation consistent with sentence text.However,supportors of the sequence processing question the view of parallel processing.Processing multiple words simultaneously can not form a coherent sentence representation,which will affect the reader's sentence reading and be inconsistent with the reader's coherent reading behavior.In 2018,supporters of the parallel processing view discovered the transposed-word effect.In their research,transposed conditional sentences are constructed by transposing the positions of two adjacent words in grammatical sentences and then setting a matching control condition.Transpose and control conditions are sentences that do not conform to grammatical rules.Except for the last word,the other words and their positions of the sentences under the two conditions are the same.The results show that compared with the control condition,readers are more likely to take the transposed sentence as grammatical sentences,and the reaction time is longer.Proponents of parallel processing believe that the transposed-word effect shows that word position coding in sentence reading is flexible rather than sequential.In addition,proponents of parallel processing believe that the transposed-word effect results from words parallel processing and syntactic processing.The discovery of the transposed-word effect solves the problem of word position coding in the view of parallel processing,which shows that readers can form coherent sentence representation and complete reading coherently while processing multiple words in parallel.This study focuses on the interesting reading phenomenon and investigates the following three issues through three studies:1.Is there a transposed-word effect in Chinese reading? That is,whether the transposed-word effect has cross-language consistency;2.What factors modulate the transposed-word effect? That is,whether the transposed-word effect has cross-factor stability;3.What is the essence of the transposed-word effect? That is,whether the transposed-word effect has the correspondence of parallel processing.The third issue is the focus and core problem to be solved in this study.In Study 1,three experiments were conducted to explore whether there is a transposed-word effect in Chinese reading when transposed words are single-character words,double-character words,and three-character words.The results showed that the error rate and reaction time under transposed condition are significantly higher and longer than those under control condition.We concluded that the transposed-word effects in Chinese reading.Through three experiments,study 2 explored the moderating effects of contextual information,reading speed,and aging on transposed-word.Experiment 1 used a two-factor and a within-subject design to explore the modulate effect of contextual information on transposed-word effect.Experiment 1 showed that when the transposed words were the third and fourth words,the amount of transposed-word effect was greater than that when the transposed words were the first and second words.The results of experiment 1 show that the transposed-word effect could be modulated by contextual information.Experiment 2 used a two-factor and within-subject design to explore the moderating effect of reading speed on the transposed-word effect.The results of experiment 2 showed that there was no significant difference in the transposed-word effect between fast reading and normal reading.That is,the results of experiment 2 showed that the transposedword effect was not affected by reading speed.Experiment 3 used a three-factor mixed design to explore the transposed-word effect of young and older adults in the process of reading.The results of experiment 3 showed that in the error rate but not in the reaction time,when the transposed words were single words,the transposed effect of the elderly was greater than that of the young;When the transposed words were double words,the transposed effect of young people was greater than that of older adults.The results of experiment 3 show that aging modulate the transposed-word effect.Through seven experiments,study 3 explored the essence of transposed-word effects from different aspects.In experiment 1,we manipulated the position of transposed words and investigated whether the distances between the transposed words would modulate the transposed-word effects.The results show that when the transposed words were two adjacent words in the middle of the sentence,the transposed-word effect existed and was the largest.When the transposed words were in the middle of the sentence(interval word),the transposed-word effect still exists,but the size of the effects becomes smaller than when the transposed words were adjacent.Finally,when transposed words were separated by more than one word(two or three words),the transposed-word effect disappeared.This pattern of results showed that the transposed-word effect was not fixed,and its appearance and the amount of effect would be modulated by the position of transposed words.In Experiment 2,we used eye-tracking technology and natural reading paradigm to observe the eye movement behavior of readers under various reading conditions.The results showed differences in eye movement patterns between correct and incorrect judgments under transposition.Under control condition,there was almost no difference in eye movement patterns between correct and incorrect judgment.When participants made correct grammatical judgments,there were differences in eye movement patterns between transpose and controll conditions.No significant differences were found when the participants made incorrect judgment under transposed and control conditions.These results showed that eye movement patterns were related to sentence conditions and right and incorrect responses.In other words,the occurrence of the transposed-word effect was related to their eye movement patterns.In experiment 3,serial visual presentation(SVP)and parallel visual presentation(PVP)paradigms were used to explore the transposed-word effect.The transposed-word effects were found in both SVP and PVP paradigms.In other words,even if readers read and process words one by one,the transposed-word effect still exists.This result strongly refutes the view that the transposed-word effect results from multiple words parallel processing.Based on the experiment 3,experiment 4 further explored the transposed-word effect of sequential vocabulary reading by manipulating the presentation time.The results showed that the error rate of transposed condition was significantly higher,and the reaction time was longer than that of the control condition under the conditions of 100 ms,250ms,or 500 ms.Moreover,in terms of error rate and response time,the amount of transposed-word effect decreases with the extension of presentation time: when the word was presented for 100 ms,the amount of transposed-word effect was the largest,250 ms was the second,and 500 ms was the smallest.This result showed that the transposition effect was related to the length of time readers spend processing words and sentences.The faster one reads,the greater the transposed-word effect will become.In the experiment 5,by manipulating the presentation of transposed words,we tested a previous conjecture about the transposed-word effect: the transposed-word effect is caused by the transposed words not entering the sentence representation according to their order in the sentence.One condition was that the first transposed word was presented together with the previous word,and the other was that two transposed words were presented simultaneously.The words were presented for 500 ms.The results showed the transposed-word effects in both presentation modes,and there was no significant difference in the transposition effects between the two presentation patterns.This pattern of results showed that the transposed-word effect was not caused by transposed words not entering the sentence representation in the order they were in the sentence.In the experiment 6,eye-tracking and boundary paradigm were used to explore whether readers could obtain the identity and location information of the parafoveal words in reading.Preview conditions are identical previews,transposed previews,and substituted previews.The results showed that the reading time of target words in transposed preview condition was significantly longer than that identical preview condition,and was significantly shorter than that in replaced preview condition.This result showed that readers could obtain the identity information and location information of parafoveal words in reading.In the experiment 7,the EEG responses under different sentence conditions were investigated using event-related potentials technology and SVP paradigm.The results showed that transposed condition has a higher error rate and longer reaction time than the control condition.Moreover,the transposed condition has a higher N400 component amplitude than the control condition.This result showed that the transposed-word effects were related to syntactic processing.Compared with the control condition,it was more difficult for readers to make correct grammatical judgments under the transposition condition,and they needed to make greater cognitive efforts.Through the above three studies and thirteen experiments,we clearly understand the generation of the transposed-word effects.Indeed,the transposed-word effect was not result from the parallel processing of multiple words.Even if the words in the sentence are processed sequentially,there will still be the transposed-word effect.The transposed-word effect has nothing to do with the way readers allocate attention during reading.It was produced after the completion of word recognition and was caused by a higher level of processing.Based on this study's experimental results and the previous theories on sentence processing and eye movement control in reading,we propose a generalized Chinese reading model(GCRM).GCRM believes that cognitive processing in sentence reading can be divided into three stages: word recognition,sentence analysis,and sentence understanding.In the stage of word recognition,readers assign attention serially and can only recognize one word at a time.After recognizing words,readers can obtain the identity and location information of words.Readers can construct sentence-level representation after obtaining the words' identity information and location information.The parsing mechanism of sentences consists of syntactic processing and semantic integration interactively.Syntactic processing and semantic integration analyze the representation at the sentence level and interact with the representation at the sentence level.By analyzing and interacting with the representation of sentence level,readers continue to promote sentence understanding.With the development of sentence reading,words continue to enter the representation of sentence-level and refresh the representation of sentence-level in a bottom-up way.At the same time,syntactic processing and semantic integration constantly refresh the representation at the sentence level through the top-down and interact with the representation at the sentence level.The sentence parsing mechanism will refresh the representation of sentence-level by adjusting the lexical position coding.When it is difficult to analyze the representation of sentence level,readers will have difficulty in sentence understanding.This difficulty will require the reader to analyze the representation of sentence-level further,reconfirm the identity and position of vocabulary through saccade,refresh the representation of sentence level,and promote sentence understanding through the interaction between the representation of sentence-level and the parsing mechanism.According to GCRM,we believe that the transposed-word effect is produced in this way:transposed words are recognized one by one and enter the representation of sentence-level according to their order in the sentence text;Syntactic processing and semantic integration interact with the representation at the sentence level,which makes the representation at the sentence level refreshed and parsed;Compared with the control condition,the sentence with the transposed condition is close to the normal sentence in syntax and can be integrated semantically through the transformation of lexical position.Therefore,the interaction between the parsing mechanism and the sentence-level representation of transposed conditions makes it easier to form a sentence representation with complete sentence meaning.As a result,the sentence in the transposed condition is more likely to be considered a grammatical sentence,resulting in a higher error rate and longer response time than the control condition.Generally speaking,the transposed-word effect is caused by higher-level sentence processing processes such as syntactic and semantic integration.Based on all the experimental results and the detailed analysis,the following conclusions can answer the three questions to be solved in this study:(1)transposed-word effect has cross-language consistency;(2)the transposition effect could not be modulated by reading speed,but by contextual information and aging;(3)the transposed-word effect is the result of syntactic processing and semantic integration in sentence reading.