The Influence Of Phonological Information On Spoken Word Recognition In Mandarin Chinese: Evidence From Eye Movements

We used eye tracking to examine how tonal versus segmental information influencespoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese. Participants listened to sentences and lookedat displays of four printed Chinese characters. In experiment1, target sentences werewritten with gua1“melon”, for example, the displays contained cohort (gu1‘mushroom’),rhyme (hua1’flower’), and tonal (qiao1’spade’)competitors, and onephonologically unrelated distracter. Target words occurred in the middle of a sentence (suchas "melon in summer is very sweet") and were presented to subjects through headphones. Afew of eye movements measures such as the first fixation duration, the total reading timeand average pupil diameter were analyzed. In experiment2, target words consisted of twoChinese characters. Similar pattern of eye movements were observed in experiment2as thatof experiment1.The results showed that:(1) when the displays appeared at sentence onset,no significant effects were observed between fixations to competitors and phonologicallyunrelated distracters.(2) when the target word appeared until the end, fixations to rhymecompetitors were less than that of unrelated distracters.(3) When a phonological contactexisted, especially the segmental contact, pupil diameter will change.(4) the fixation countsand fixation percentage index were consistent with the total reading time.(5) Based on theabove two experiments, draw the following conclusions: the experiment dose not supportfor the Trace model; the effect of cohort information and tonal information on spoken wordrecognition in Mandarin Chinese is not clear; pupil size is more sensitive to spoken wordsegmental information.