Effects Of Word Length And Frequency On Eye Movements In Chinese Reading

Word length in alphabetic language is a fundamental factor that affects lexical identification and saccade target selection during reading.Chinese is unspaced and most words are comprised of one or two characters,the range of word length is very small.Is word length an important role during Chinese reading?Due to the close relationship between word length and word frequency,as the word length increases,the word frequency decreases.Most of previous studies regarding word length in Chinese have investigated word frequency effect while controlling word length,or have investigated word length without controlling word frequency.Therefore,the present study investigated word length effect in Chinese reading by strictly controlling word frequency.The range of word length in Chinese is comparatively smaller compared to English,the relationship of word length and word frequency is relatively stable.How do word length and word frequency affect reading?We used Eyelink1000 to record readers' eye movements.The present study aimed to investigate whether word length is an important cue in relation to oculomotor decisions,and whether it combines with word frequency to affect eye movement control.Two experiments were conducted in present study:There were 30 university students taking part in Experiment 1.It was a single factor with three levels within-subject design(word length:one,two and three character word),we strictly controlled the frequency of target words.We analysed eye movement measures for the target word and three-character region(a one-character word followed by two additional characters in one-character word condition,a two-character word with an additional character in two-character word condition,a single three-character word in three-character word condition).Experiment 1 aimed to explore how word length affect reading.There were 72 university students taking part in Experiment 2.It was a 2(word frequency:high frequency and low frequency)× 3(word length:one character word,two character word with total number of strokes equaling to the one character word,two character word with its first character stroke number equaling to the one character word).Experiment 2 aimed to explore how visual and lexical information affect readingFrom the results and the analysis,we concluded that:(1)Word length played a key role in lexical identification and saccade target selection in Chinese reading.Longer words took longer to process(primarily driven by refixations),skips were fewer,incoming saccades longer and landing positions further to the right of long than short words.This effect of word length was not modulated by strokes and initial character frequency.(2)Additional analyses for the three-character region(matched stroke number)showed an incremental processing cost when character(s)belonged to different,rather than the same,word.It demonstrates that the word is an important processing unit in Chinese reading.(3)Word frequency played a key role in lexical processing.However,word frequency has no influence on saccade target selection.Initial character frequency,as a part of word frequency,modulated the effect of word frequency.(4)Word length and word frequency as visual and lexical factor independently affect reading.Furthermore,this effect was not modulated by initial character strokes and initial character frequency.