Cross-task Comparison Of Chinese Two-character Word Neighborhood Size Effects And The Influence Of Reading Skills

The neighborhood size of Chinese two-character words refers to the number of neighborhood words in which the last character of the target word changes while the first character remains unchanged.In order to verify the Semantic Activation Model of Chinese neighborhood size effect,that is,the facilitation effect is mainly manifested in the activation of semantic information of neighborhood words,three experimental tasks(naming,lexical desicion and sentence reading)can reflect different processing levels and stages of lexical recognition.To explore the nature of the Chinese two-character word neighborhood size facilitation effect.Furthermore,previous studies on individual differences in reading skill levels of readers have mainly focused on the comparisons between readers of different ages or dyslexics and normal readers,but this study wanted to examine whether there are individual differences in reading skills among adult skilled readers and whether these differences exist.How this difference affects the performance of the neighborhood size effect during word recognition.Based on previous studies,an individual difference test with Chinese reading characteristics was developed to measure the differences in reading skills of proficient readers,and then their performance on three experimental tasks was observed to explore the effect of individual differences in reading skills among adult readers on word recognition.Study 1 used three sub-experimental tasks that reflect different stages of lexical processing to explore the process and reasons for the effect of Chinese two-character word neighborhood size.and the experimental design was two factors 2(neighborhood size: big &small)* 2(word frequency: high & low)within subjects design,the experimental results show that: in the naming task and lexical decision task,the reaction time and correct rate both show the facilitation of neighborhood size.In the sentence reading task,all eye movement indicators showed a facilitation effect of neighborhood size,indicating that the facilitative effects of neighborhood size started in the early stage of lexical recognition and continued to the later stage.And the facilitative effects size of the neighborhood size was different in the three experimental tasks.There was no significant difference in the facilitative effects size of neighborhood size in lexical decision task and sentence reading task,but they were all larger than those in the naming task.Study 2 used two self-designed reading skill tests,spelling ability test and reading comprehension test,to explore whether individual differences of Chinese skilled readers affect lexical recognition.The subjects were all participants in study 1.The results are as follows: in terms of spelling ability,subjects with different word levels have differences in the performance of three experimental tasks.That is,subjects with higher spelling ability,The shorter the reaction time in naming task and lexical decision task,the shorter the total fixation time and the higher the skip rate in sentence reading task.In terms of reading comprehension ability,subjects with different reading levels showed significant differences in lexical decision task,gazing time and total reading time,but no difference in naming task.The shorter the reaction time,the shorter the total fixation time and gazing time in sentence reading task.The higher the reading comprehension level,the bigger neighborhood size facilitative effect on the total fixation time,that is,the individual differences in reading comprehension will affect the subjects’ performance in lexical recognition.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)the facilitative effects of neighborhood size of Chinese two-character words is greater under the condition of semantic activation.which validates the Semantic Activation Model of the Chinese neighborhood size effect(2)There are individual differences in reading skills among proficient Chinese readers,which affect the subjects’ lexical recognition process.