Abstract
Words are typically considered to be the basic processing units of reading. In alphabetic reading, words are salient due to the presence of visual boundaries: spaces between words. In contrast, written Chinese, which is considered to be a largely logographic language, is generally printed
as a string of continuous characters, with no visually distinct inter-word spaces. That raises a fundamental question of how Chinese readers segmenting words in text reading. Liu et al (2013) adopted a word-segmentation task to examine the performance of word segmentation during Chinese reading.
Arguably, the most striking finding of Liu et al.’s study was that Chinese adult readers tended to consider the high-frequency auxiliary word (i.e., “的”) and the adjacent word to its left as a word unit. For example, two words “ 美丽 ” (měi lì, meaning beautiful) and “ 的 ” (de) were typically considered as a whole word unit “ 美丽的 ”. Here, we proposed this assumption as “the left side adhesion of auxiliary word segmentation” in Chinese reading.
In the present study, we further addressed the following issue, namely, when and how this left side adhesion associated with the auxiliary word segmentation developed in Chinese reading?
We adopted the same word segmentation task as in Liu et al.’s study (2013). Participants were instructed to segment a set of Chinese sentences into individual words according to their prior word knowledge. Four groups of readers took part in this study: 2nd, 4th, 6th grade of primary school
students and undergraduates. There were 902 participants in total. Compared with previous studies, the present study firstly calculated the average “adhesive segmentation rate” of every group as the baseline, and then single-sample t-tests were performed to compare the observed adhesive
segmentation rate on the left side of auxiliary words of each group against the value of the corresponding baseline. If the observed adhesive segmentation rate of one group was significantly higher than the group’s baseline, it suggested that the “the left side adhesion of auxiliary word
segmentation” appeared as a characteristic in this group. The concrete calculating methods of “adhesive segmentation rate” were as follows. The total number of auxiliary words individual participant read was divided by the observed sum of the situation that he or she disagreed the left segmentation of auxiliary words, and the obtained quotient was the “left side adhesion of auxiliary word segmentation” of one participant.
The results showed that the rate of “left side adhesion” was significantly higher than the baseline for each group of participants. It significantly increased from 2nd grade to 4th grade and remained stable at 6th grade, and then noticeably increased to adulthood. These results indicated that the
left side adhesion of auxiliary word segmentation was formed at a relatively young age, however it was less mature in children than adults. This might be due to children’s less-skilled reading. The other aspect of results showed that the “left side adhesive segmentation” rate depended on the property of the left side adhesive words, such that when the left side adhesive words were verbs or adverbs, the left side adhesive segmentation occurred at 2nd grade, and the developmental trend was quite similar as the overall developmental trend. However, when the left side adhesive words were adjectives or nouns, the “left side adhesive segmentation” did not occur among pupils.
In conclusion, the findings in the present study revealed that the “left side adhesive segmentation” of auxiliary words was influenced by both age and the property of the adjacent words.
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Bai Xuejun, He Fei, Wu Hao, Li Xin, Liang Feifei.
Development of Adhesive Segmentation of Auxiliary Words in Chinese Reading[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2020, 43(4): 770-776
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