title: Plausibility effects when reading one- and two-character words in Chinese: evidence from eye movements.
abstract: Eye movements of Chinese readers were monitored as they read sentences containing a critical character that was either a 1-character word or the initial character of a 2-character word. Due to manipulation of the verb prior to the target word, the 1-character target word (or the first character of the 2-character target word) was either plausible or implausible, as an independent word, at the point at which it appeared, whereas the 2-character word was always plausible. The eye movement data showed that the plausibility manipulation did not exert an influence on the reading of the 2-character word or its component characters. However, plausibility significantly influenced reading of the 1-character target word. These results suggest that processes of semantic integration in reading Chinese are performed at a word level, instead of a character level, and that word segmentation must take place very early in the course of processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, SanDiego, CA 92093, USA.
authors.forename: Jinmian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Adrian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Staub
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Suiping
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rayner
mesh_terms: D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005133:Eye Movements; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011336:Probability; D011932:Reading