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Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children’s reading

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children’s reading
Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children’s reading
Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning
children, positional character frequency, word learning, word spacing
2044-5911
594-608
Liang, F.
9b275f55-215c-421f-a974-858ba191caf6
Blythe, Hazel I.
51835633-e40b-4e8b-ae49-ad6b2f927f4c
Zang, C.
ca6fff4a-b8cc-4b14-b440-b23889aa3f62
Bai, X.
7eb0bf18-b331-4b92-b298-56781a312ed2
Yan, G.
c7a3dacc-6ea1-488f-8051-1a9b6c13fe4e
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Liang, F.
9b275f55-215c-421f-a974-858ba191caf6
Blythe, Hazel I.
51835633-e40b-4e8b-ae49-ad6b2f927f4c
Zang, C.
ca6fff4a-b8cc-4b14-b440-b23889aa3f62
Bai, X.
7eb0bf18-b331-4b92-b298-56781a312ed2
Yan, G.
c7a3dacc-6ea1-488f-8051-1a9b6c13fe4e
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee

Liang, F., Blythe, Hazel I., Zang, C., Bai, X., Yan, G. and Liversedge, Simon P. (2015) Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children’s reading. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 27 (5), 594-608. (doi:10.1080/20445911.2014.1000918).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning

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e-pub ahead of print date: 29 January 2015
Published date: 29 January 2015
Keywords: children, positional character frequency, word learning, word spacing

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 377231
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/377231
ISSN: 2044-5911
PURE UUID: b8a7659f-891e-48bf-bdb7-f8d4a4e1a641

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Date deposited: 28 May 2015 10:51
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 19:59

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Contributors

Author: F. Liang
Author: Hazel I. Blythe
Author: C. Zang
Author: X. Bai
Author: G. Yan
Author: Simon P. Liversedge

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