The Effect Of Background Speech On The Predictive Effect Of Context

In our daily work and study,we often carry out various kinds of complex cognitive activities accompanied by different kinds of noise.Reading psychologists have found that the presence of background sounds affects the normal reading process,resulting in longer reading time and lower reading accuracy.Context predictability is an important factor in the early and late stage of vocabulary recognition.We need to find out which stage of word recognition is influenced by background sounds? What kind of background sound will affect vocabulary recognition?In the present study,eye movement tracking technique was used to investigate the effect of background sounds on context predictability in Chinese reading by manipulating predictability of target words(high and low)and types of irrelevant background speech(Uyghur,Chinese and silent reading).The results have showed that:(1)In the global(whole sentence)and local analysis(target words),there was a main effect of context predictability.Low predictable words took longer reading time,and were less likely to be skipped and more likely to be looked back than high predictable words.This suggests that the predictive effect of context exists not only in the early process of vocabulary recognition,but also in the integration of sentence meaning;(2)Readers spent longest total reading times and most number of fixations while reading with Chinese speech,shorter and less fixations for the Uyghur speech,shortest and least for the silence background,which indicates that the semantic information in irrelevant background speech disrupts reading efficiency.There were also significant main effects of types of irrelevant sounds on the whole sentence index of the number of look back and forward saccade amplitude,and the total fixation time of the target word.The Chinese background sound condition took longer time and more look back times than the silent and Uyghur background sound conditions.There was no difference between the Uyghur and the silent reading conditions,which indicates that the background sound condition with semantic information(that is,the Chinese background sound condition).This kind of disruption is manifested in the late stage of vocabulary access and the stage of context integration;(3)In the whole sentence reading,there was a significant interaction between the context predictability and the irrelevant background speech in the number of look back and the amplitude of forward saccade,such that the context predictive effect was significant in Uyghur,but disappeared in Chinese,indicating that the Chinese speech has disrupted the context predictive effect.The research results support the semantic interference hypothesis as a whole.