Abstract: A number of cognitive studies have indicated that words play a critical role in reading. Hence, word segmentation is an important procedure in reading. Unlike alphabetic writing systems such as English, there are no spaces between words. Without spaces, how do Chinese readers segment words? In this article, recent progresses in the following topics on Chinese word segmentation are reviewed: 1) Evidences that Chinese characters belonging to a word are processed as a unit; 2) Some recent psychological studies on Chinese word segmentation and some of the models; 3) Word segmentation studies in computer sciences; 4) Future directions on this topic.

Key words: word segmentation, word recognition, word boundary effect, Chinese reading