Effect of Word Segmentation on Hindi-English bilinguals’ reading: Evidence from Eye Movements

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2012, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (3) : 544-549.

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2012, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (3) : 544-549.

Effect of Word Segmentation on Hindi-English bilinguals’ reading: Evidence from Eye Movements

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Abstract

Indian is a special country which has two official languages. Hindi and English are both spaced alphabetic languages, Hindi is also their mother language. In the present study, we investigate the role of space information through two-official-language readers. We examine how word discriminability affect the pattern of eye movements when reading unspaced text in two alphabetic languages. We carried out three conditions (1) normally condition, (2) alternating gray unspaced condition, (3) unspaced condition. We therefore predict that, (1) the unspaced text may have a greater interfered effect for Hindi and English reading, (2) alternating gray unspaced condition is obvious visual cue for readers during reading. To study the effect of word segmentation on Hindi-English bilinguals’ reading, 25 Indian University students who were bilinguals of Hindi-English participated in the research, their eye movements were recorded with SR research EyeLink 2000 eyetracker. In Experiment 1,Hindi sentences were constructed with 3 types of spacing: (1) normally written sentences, (2) alternating gray unspaced sentences, (3) unspaced sentences. In Experiment 2, we used three types of sentences as in Experiment 1 to make three different types of English sentences to investigate the role of space information in English reading. The trends of data from two experiments were very similar. Global fixation counts and total reading time measures indicated that (1) The efficiency of Hindi reading under the normally is better than alternating gray unspaced condition and unspaced condition; (2) The efficiency of English reading under the normally is best, alternating gray unspaced condition is better than unspaced condition. The results of the present study suggested that Spacing information plays an important role for both Hindi and English reading. Under the alternating gray unspaced condition and unspaced conditionis, the speed of English reading reduce much more than Hindi reading. The role of spacing information is effected by language traits.

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word segmentation / Hindi / English / eye movements

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Effect of Word Segmentation on Hindi-English bilinguals’ reading: Evidence from Eye Movements[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2012, 35(3): 544-549

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