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The Effect of Word Predictability on Phonological Activation in Cantonese Reading: A Study of Eye-Fixations and Pupillary Response

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Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of contextual predictability on orthographic and phonological activation during Chinese sentence reading by Cantonese-speaking readers using the error disruption paradigm. Participants’ eye fixations and pupil sizes were recorded while they silently read Chinese sentences containing homophonic, orthographic, and unrelated errors. Sentences had varying amounts of contextual information leading up to target words such that some targets were more predictable than others. Results of the fixation time analysis indicated that orthographic effects were significant in first fixation and gaze duration, while phonological effects emerged later in total reading time. However, interactions between predictability and the homophonic condition were found in gaze duration. These results suggest that, while Cantonese readers activate word meanings primarily through orthography in early processing, early phonological activation can occur when facilitated by semantics in high-constraint sentence contexts. Analysis of pupillary response measurements revealed that participants’ pupil sizes became larger when they read words containing orthographic errors, suggesting that orthographic error recovery processes significantly increase cognitive load.

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Notes

  1. Chinese pronunciations shown in the Cantonese romanization system, Jyutping.

  2. Traditional characters are those most widely used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, in contrast to simplified characters used in mainland China.

  3. The N400 is negative-going potential which peaks around 400 ms after the onset of the stimulus. Priming studies have shown its amplitude to be affected by various properties of the prime such as orthographic, phonological and semantic relatedness. .

  4. During reading, the parafoveal range encompasses 1-–2 words beyond the word being directly fixated (Vasilev & Angele, 2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Philip Thierfelder & Gillian Wigglesworth

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Gautier Durantin

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Appendix

Appendix

Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Table 5 Full fixation time GLMMs
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Table 6 Full fixation time GLMMs—trial effects
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Table 7 Full pupil diameter LMM
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Table 8 Full pupil diameter LMM—trial effects
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Thierfelder, P., Durantin, G. & Wigglesworth, G. The Effect of Word Predictability on Phonological Activation in Cantonese Reading: A Study of Eye-Fixations and Pupillary Response. J Psycholinguist Res 49, 779–801 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09713-8

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