The Mechanism Of Word Skipping In Chinese Reading:an Eye Movement Study

Readers do not fixate each word of the text during reading, instead, they may miss some words which refers to "word skipping". Previous studies showed that about40-60%of words were skipped in Chinese reading.What causes and when readers make the decision of word skipping, whether the skipped word has been processed or not? Numerous studies have been done on this, but there are still three debates:firstly, whether word skipping depended on partial or full recognition of that word; secondly, whether foveal load modulated word skipping or not; thirdly, whether skipping lead to longer previous fixation or not. Thus, the present studies, with focus on the three debates, used eye tracking to explore the mechanism of skipping during natural Chinese sentence readingThree studies including five experiments were carried out. Study1examined to what extent the skipped words were processed and whether the decision of skipping words finally depended on context constraint or parafoveal processing. Two experiments were carried on. Specifically, in Experiment1, the type of parafoveal word was manipulated (predictable word, unpredictable word, nonword but orthographically similar to the predictable word, nonword but orthographically dissimilar to the predictable word, illegal semantic word, or illegal orthographical nonword). It could be known to what extent the skipped word was processed by comparing the skipping difference between predictable word and other conditions. In Experiment2, in order to make it clear whether word skipping depended on parafoveal processing or context concsrtaint, the parafoveal preview of the target verbs was manipulated with three preview conditions:identical to the correct form, a semantic and syntactic anomaly function word "De", or a pseudocharacter by using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Additionally, whether the skipping word caused the increased previous fixation was examined in Study1.Study2focused on whether foveal processing modulated word skipping or not. Experiment3and4were included. Experiment3examined whether foveal load (high: normal writing, or low:illegal writing) affected word skipping on parafoveal during normal sentence reading. Boundary paradigm was used in Experiment4to furtherly examine whether foveal load (high:low frequency, or low:high frequency) modulated the skipping probability in different preview conditions (identical or pseudocharacter).Based on the results of Study1and2of which the participants were young adults, Study3investigated how aging influenced visual and linguistic factors on skipping and fixation by comparing young and older adults. Experiment5was included in Study3. In details, word frequency (high or low) and complexity (high or low) were manipulated to explore how the two factors interactively affected on the decision of skipping and fixation for the two groups.The conclusion was made as follows based on the findings of the three studies:(1) The decision of word skipping was more likely based on the full recognition, though partial processing (i.e. orthography) may promote readers to skip a word to some extent.(2) Chinese readers often skipped a word depending on the processing of, especially for the word that was easily processed.(3) Foveal load had independent influence on the decision of skipping and fixating the next word; word skipping was more sensitive on manipulation of foveal load comparing to fixation times.(4) The previous fixation was shorter when Chinese readers skipped a high frequency and low complexity word than when fixated it (i.e. word skipping benefit).(5) Word frequency and character complexity independently affect the targeting of saccades both for young and older readers, indicating similarities in the basic function of when and where to move the eyes for young and older adult.(6) Comparing to young adults, older Chinese readers were more sensitive to word complexity, with longer fixation duration on high than low complexity words; besides, older readers skipped less which indicating they used a careful reading strategy.