Effects of aging and text-stimulus quality on the word-frequency effect during Chinese Reading
Effects of aging and text-stimulus quality on the word-frequency effect during Chinese Reading
Age-related reading difficulty is well established for alphabetic languages. Compared to young adults (18-30 years), older adults (65+ years) read more slowly, make more and longer fixations, make more regressions, and produce larger word-frequency effects. However, whether similar effects are observed for nonalphabetic languages like Chinese remains to be determined. In particular, recent research has suggested Chinese readers experience age-related reading difficulty but do not produce age differences in the word-frequency effect. This might represent an important qualitative difference in aging effects, so we investigated this further by presenting young and older adult Chinese readers with sentences that included high- or low-frequency target words. Additionally, to test theories that suggest reductions in text-stimulus quality differentially affect lexical processing by adult age groups, we presented either the target words (Experiment 1) or all characters in sentences (Experiment 2) normally or with stimulus quality reduced. Analyses based on mean eye-movement parameters and distributional analyses of fixation times for target words showed typical age-related reading difficulty. We also observed age differences in the word-frequency effect, predominantly in the tails of fixation-time distributions, consistent with an aging effect on the processing of high- and low-frequency words. Reducing stimulus quality disrupted eye movements more for the older readers, but the influence of stimulus quality on the word-frequency effect did not differ across age groups. This suggests Chinese older readers' lexical processing is resilient to reductions in stimulus quality, perhaps due to greater experience recognizing words from impoverished visual input.
Aging, Chinese, Eye movements during reading, Text-stimulus quality, Word frequency
693-712
Wang, Jingxin
cb063077-a2a8-4f8f-81c2-c50df1fd2337
Li, Lin
27f91740-1583-4709-80fe-f443e9c08a2b
Li, Sha
da545019-4a56-4488-bd61-fe33beb6f6bd
Xie, Fang
34413920-3836-4078-9119-6ff1f75f4c8c
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Paterson, Kevin B.
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1 June 2018
Wang, Jingxin
cb063077-a2a8-4f8f-81c2-c50df1fd2337
Li, Lin
27f91740-1583-4709-80fe-f443e9c08a2b
Li, Sha
da545019-4a56-4488-bd61-fe33beb6f6bd
Xie, Fang
34413920-3836-4078-9119-6ff1f75f4c8c
Liversedge, Simon P.
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Paterson, Kevin B.
4da4f2c5-542a-4a64-9b7e-f4f8380a60e1
Wang, Jingxin, Li, Lin, Li, Sha, Xie, Fang, Liversedge, Simon P. and Paterson, Kevin B.
(2018)
Effects of aging and text-stimulus quality on the word-frequency effect during Chinese Reading.
Psychology and Aging, 33 (4), .
(doi:10.1037/pag0000259).
Abstract
Age-related reading difficulty is well established for alphabetic languages. Compared to young adults (18-30 years), older adults (65+ years) read more slowly, make more and longer fixations, make more regressions, and produce larger word-frequency effects. However, whether similar effects are observed for nonalphabetic languages like Chinese remains to be determined. In particular, recent research has suggested Chinese readers experience age-related reading difficulty but do not produce age differences in the word-frequency effect. This might represent an important qualitative difference in aging effects, so we investigated this further by presenting young and older adult Chinese readers with sentences that included high- or low-frequency target words. Additionally, to test theories that suggest reductions in text-stimulus quality differentially affect lexical processing by adult age groups, we presented either the target words (Experiment 1) or all characters in sentences (Experiment 2) normally or with stimulus quality reduced. Analyses based on mean eye-movement parameters and distributional analyses of fixation times for target words showed typical age-related reading difficulty. We also observed age differences in the word-frequency effect, predominantly in the tails of fixation-time distributions, consistent with an aging effect on the processing of high- and low-frequency words. Reducing stimulus quality disrupted eye movements more for the older readers, but the influence of stimulus quality on the word-frequency effect did not differ across age groups. This suggests Chinese older readers' lexical processing is resilient to reductions in stimulus quality, perhaps due to greater experience recognizing words from impoverished visual input.
Text
26464 Aging_and_Chinese_Reading_FINAL_ACCEPTED
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
e-pub ahead of print date: 1 June 2018
Published date: 1 June 2018
Keywords:
Aging, Chinese, Eye movements during reading, Text-stimulus quality, Word frequency
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Local EPrints ID: 424822
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/424822
ISSN: 0882-7974
PURE UUID: e6eb8d2f-622c-43ef-9a2f-0cb0e6c72e5d
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Date deposited: 05 Oct 2018 11:48
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 20:50
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Author:
Jingxin Wang
Author:
Lin Li
Author:
Sha Li
Author:
Fang Xie
Author:
Simon P. Liversedge
Author:
Kevin B. Paterson
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