The word frequency effect of fovea and its effect on the preview effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2020.01143

Abstract

Abstract:

In the process of reading, readers mainly obtain information through the foveal region—in particular, the parafovea plays an important role in information acquisition. Readers can obtain certain information from the parafovea through preview processing, thus promoting the improvement of reading efficiency, which is called the “preview effect”. The effect of the processing load of the fovea on the preview effect of parafovea has become a popular research focus in recent years. For example, studies based on alphabetic writing have found that the preview effect of the parafovea is greater for high-frequency and short words than for low-frequency and long words. While Tibetan is an analphabetic language, it also belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and has many similarities with Chinese. However, it is still largely unclear how to reflect the above role in the process of Tibetan reading. Will it only show the common characteristics of alphabetic languages or will it show some Chinese characteristics? The present study aimed to provide experimental evidence for these research questions.

Two experiments were carried out on 119 Tibetan undergraduate students. More specifically, participants were asked to read Tibetan sentences and their eye movements during reading were recorded using a SR Research EyeLink 1000Plus eye tracker (sampling rate = 1000 Hz). Experiment 1 manipulated the foveal word frequency (i.e., high vs. low frequency) to investigate the word frequency effect and word frequency delay effect of foveal words in Tibetan reading. The results showed a word frequency effect and a word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading. Experiment 2 manipulated both foveal word frequency and parafoveal preview word types with the aid of boundary paradigm to investigate the preview effect of parafovea and the effect of foveal word frequency on the preview effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading. The results showed a preview effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading and that, when compared with low-frequency foveal words, high-frequency foveal words had a greater promoting effect on the preview effect of parafovea.

The primary findings can be summarized as follows: (1) significant word frequency effect exists in Tibetan reading, which is reflected in the whole process of vocabulary processing; (2) there is a significant word frequency delay effect in Tibetan reading, which runs through the whole process of vocabulary processing; (3) there is a significant preview effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading, through which the reader can extract phonology and font information; and (4) in Tibetan reading, foveal word frequency affects the size of the preview effect of parafovea—moreover, word frequency only affects the extraction of font preview information in the early stage of lexical processing; that is, the preview effect of high-frequency words is greater under the condition of font preview.

In conclusion, the effect of the processing load of fovea on the preview effect of parafovea shows the common characteristics of alphabetic writing in Tibetan reading. In addition, this study found that reading Tibetan involves the word frequency delay effect and the preview effect of parafovea. These findings support theory of parafovea sequence processing in the E-Z reader model.

Key words: Tibetan reading, word frequency effect, word frequency delay effect, preview effect, eye movement

GAO Xiaolei, LI Xiaowei, SUN Min, BAI Xuejun, GAO Lei. (2020). The word frequency effect of fovea and its effect on the preview effect of parafovea in Tibetan reading. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 52(10), 1143-1155.

Figures/Tables 9

References 74

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Languages	Language type		Structure		Word/Word mark		Transparency
Languages	Alphabetic writing	Ideographic writing	Linear structure	Three-dimensional structure	Separator character	Blank space	Pronounced transparency	pronounced opaque
Tibetan	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
English	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Chinese	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	Yes

Languages	Language type		Structure		Word/Word mark		Transparency
Languages	Alphabetic writing	Ideographic writing	Linear structure	Three-dimensional structure	Separator character	Blank space	Pronounced transparency	pronounced opaque
Tibetan	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
English	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Chinese	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	Yes

Group	Frequency of words (counts/million)	Word length (number of characters)
High frequency group	301 ± 625	4.05 ± 1.01
Low frequency group	26 ± 153	4.50 ± 1.13

Group	Frequency of words (counts/million)	Word length (number of characters)
High frequency group	301 ± 625	4.05 ± 1.01
Low frequency group	26 ± 153	4.50 ± 1.13

Word frequency	First fixation duration (ms)	Gaze duration (ms)	Total fixation duration (ms)	Total fixation counts （counts）
High frequency	256 ± 47	430 ± 180	749 ± 338	2.9 ± 1.1
Low frequency	265 ± 42	511 ± 219	909 ± 404	3.5 ± 1.4