Work

Eye-Movement Evidence for Object-Based Attention in Chinese Reading

Year: 2017

Type: article

Abstract: Is attention allocated to only one word or to multiple words at any given time during reading? The experiments reported here addressed this question using a novel paradigm inspired by classic findings on object-based attention. In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 18) made lexical decisions about one of two spatially colocated Chinese words or nonwords. Our main finding was that only the attended word's frequency influenced response times and accuracy. In Experiment 2, participants ( N = 30) read target words embedded in two spatially colocated Chinese sentences. Our key finding here was that only target-word frequencies influenced looking times and fixation positions. These results support the hypothesis that words are attended in a strictly serial (and perhaps object-based) manner during reading. The theoretical implications of this conclusion are discussed in relation to models of eye-movement control during reading and the conceptualization of words as visual objects.

Source: Psychological Science

DOI: 10.1177/0956797617734827

Authors: Yanping Liu, Erik D. Reichle

Institutions: Sun Yat-sen University, Macquarie University

Language: English

Topic: Reading and Literacy Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Institutes of Health, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: G4261103297, G4425780623, Cognitive Load in the Bilingual Brain: Insights from Decoupled Reading