Effect Of Word Segmentation On Mongolian Students Reading Chinese:Evidence From Eye Movements

Unlike phonetic script such as English and Mongolian,Chinese words consist of characters,and there is no obvious word boundary.For Mongolian students whose native language is phonetic script,when reading Chinese texts,the correct segmentation of words from the sentences is very important in reading comprehension of Chinese texts.But sometimes,Mongolian students may have difficulty in comprehension Chinese text result in they can't correctly segment words.In present research,48 Mongolian international students' eye movements was recorded by EyeLink 1000 eye trackers.Three experiments were conducted to examine the effect of word segmentation on Chinese reading by Mongolian students.In Experiment 1,16 participants read four types of Chinese sentences: unspaced sentences(normal text),word-spaced sentences,character-spaced sentences,and nonword-spaced sentences.To investigate whether the insertion of inter-word spaces in Chinese sentences will facilitate Chinese reading of Mongolian students,meanwhile to explore whether the basic unit of information in Chinese reading is characters or words.In experiment 2,four types of sentences similar with in experiment 1 were formed in which using the gray highlighting to mark words boundaries instead of spaces.To explore whether the words boundaries will facilitate the Chinese reading of Mongolian students when the sentence spatial distribution is consistent.In experiment 3,the material complexity variable was introduced to investigate whether the material complexity affects the role of word segmentation.By analysis of the data results,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The use of inter-word spaces to mark word boundaries has facilitate Mongolian students' Chinese reading.Non-word spaces and character-spaced condition have interfered with readers' Chinese reading.Specifically,shorter total reading time and longer saccade length for Mongolian students under the condition of word-spaced condition than under normal conditions.(2)For Mongolian students,reading Chinese sentences under the condition of gray-marked words boundaries were as easy as sentences under normal conditions,and gray bars as word boundaries are not as effective as spaces for Mongolian students.(3)The Chinese reading experience will affect the the role of words segmentation in vocabulary recognition.The subjects who have less Chinese reading experience will affected by word boundaries in late period of vocabulary recognition.The subjects with more reading experience will benefit from role of words segmentation throughout the whole of period vocabulary recognition.(4)Material difficulty has certain influence on the function of word segmentation.When reading simple sentences,the word segmentation has a greater effect on the reader's saccade length.(5)In Chinese reading,the words and not individual characters,are the basic unit of infomation in Chinese reading.