GECO-CN: Ghent Eye-tracking COrpus of sentence reading for Chinese-English bilinguals.

The current work presents the very first eye-tracking corpus of natural reading by Chinese-English bilinguals, whose two languages entail different writing systems and orthographies. Participants read an entire novel in these two languages, presented in paragraphs on screen. Half of the participants first read half of the novel in their native language (Simplified Chinese) and then the rest of the novel in their second language (English), while the other half read in the reverse language order. This article presents some important basic descriptive statistics of reading times and compares the difference between reading in the two languages. However, this unique eye-tracking corpus also allows the exploration of theories of language processing and bilingualism. Importantly, it provides a solid and reliable ground for studying the difference between Eastern and Western languages, understanding the impact and consequences of having a completely different first language on bilingual processing. The materials are freely available for use by researchers interested in (bilingual) reading.

Expanding horizons of cross-linguistic research on reading: The Multilingual Eye-movement Corpus (MECO).

Scientific studies of language behavior need to grapple with a large diversity of languages in the world and, for reading, a further variability in writing systems. Yet, the ability to form meaningful theories of reading is contingent on the availability of cross-linguistic behavioral data. This paper offers new insights into aspects of reading behavior that are shared and those that vary systematically across languages through an investigation of eye-tracking data from 13 languages recorded during text reading. We begin with reporting a bibliometric analysis of eye-tracking studies showing that the current empirical base is insufficient for cross-linguistic comparisons. We respond to this empirical lacuna by presenting the Multilingual Eye-Movement Corpus (MECO), the product of an international multi-lab collaboration. We examine which behavioral indices differentiate between reading in written languages, and which measures are stable across languages. One of the findings is that readers of different languages vary considerably in their skipping rate (i.e., the likelihood of not fixating on a word even once) and that this variability is explained by cross-linguistic differences in word length distributions. In contrast, if readers do not skip a word, they tend to spend a similar average time viewing it. We outline the implications of these findings for theories of reading. We also describe prospective uses of the publicly available MECO data, and its further development plans.

How well do word recognition measures correlate? Effects of language context and repeated presentations.

In the present study we assessed the extent to which different word recognition time measures converge, using large databases of lexical decision times and eyetracking measures. We observed a low proportion of shared variance between these measures, which limits the validity of lexical decision times to real-life reading. We further investigated and compared the role of word frequency and length, two important predictors of word-processing latencies in these paradigms, and found that they influenced the measures to different extents. A second analysis of two different eyetracking corpora compared the eyetracking reading times for short paragraphs with those from reading of an entire book. Our results revealed that the correlations between eyetracking reading times of identical words in two different corpora are also low, suggesting that the higher-order language context in which words are presented plays a crucial role. Finally, our findings indicate that lexical decision times better resemble the average processing time of multiple presentations of the same word, across different language contexts.

Presenting GECO: An eyetracking corpus of monolingual and bilingual sentence reading.

This article introduces GECO, the Ghent Eye-Tracking Corpus, a monolingual and bilingual corpus of the eyetracking data of participants reading a complete novel. English monolinguals and Dutch-English bilinguals read an entire novel, which was presented in paragraphs on the screen. The bilinguals read half of the novel in their first language, and the other half in their second language. In this article, we describe the distributions and descriptive statistics of the most important reading time measures for the two groups of participants. This large eyetracking corpus is perfectly suited for both exploratory purposes and more directed hypothesis testing, and it can guide the formulation of ideas and theories about naturalistic reading processes in a meaningful context. Most importantly, this corpus has the potential to evaluate the generalizability of monolingual and bilingual language theories and models to the reading of long texts and narratives. The corpus is freely available at http://expsy.ugent.be/downloads/geco .

Improving reading rate prediction with word length information: Evidence from Dutch.

Previous research in English has suggested that reading rate predictions can be improved considerably by taking average word length into account. In this study, we investigated whether the same regularity holds for Dutch. The Dutch language is very similar to English, but words are on average half a letter longer: 5.1 letters per word (in non-fiction) instead of 4.6. We collected reading rates of 62 participants reading 12 texts with varying word lengths and examined which change in the English equation accounts for the Dutch findings. We observed that predictions were close to the best-fitting curve as soon as the average English word length was replaced by the average Dutch word length. The equation predicts that Dutch texts with an average word length of 5.1 letters will be read at a rate of 238 words per minute (wpm). Texts with an average word length of 4.5 letters will be read at 270 wpm, and texts with an average word length of 6.0 letters will be read at a rate of 202 wpm. The findings are in line with the assumption that the longer words in Dutch do not slow down silent reading relative to English and that the word length effect observed in each language is due to word processing effort and not to low-level visual factors.

Dutch Author Recognition Test.

Book reading shows large individual variability and correlates with better language ability and more empathy. This makes reading exposure an interesting variable to study. Research in English suggests that an author recognition test is the most reliable objective assessment of reading frequency. In this article, we describe the efforts we made to build and test a Dutch author recognition test (DART for older participants and DART_R for younger participants). Our data show that the test is reliable and valid, both in the Netherlands and in Belgium (split-half reliability over .9 with university students, significant correlations with language abilities) and can be used with a young, non-university population. The test is free to use for research purposes.

Is there adaptation of speech production after speech perception in bilingual interaction?

In dialogue, speakers tend to adapt their speech to the speech of their interlocutor. Adapting speech production to preceding speech input may be particularly relevant for second language (L2) speakers interacting with native (L1) speakers, as adaptation may facilitate L2 learning. Here we asked whether Dutch-English bilinguals adapt pronunciation of the English phonemes /æ/ and coda /b/ when reading aloud sentences after exposure to native English speech. Additionally, we tested whether social context (presence or absence of a native English confederate) and time lag between perception and production of the phoneme affected adaptation. Participants produced more English-like target words that ended in word-final /b/ after exposure to target phonemes produced by a native speaker, but the participants did not change their production of the phoneme /æ/ after exposure to native /æ/. The native English speaking confederate did not show consistent changes in speech production after exposure to target phonemes produced by L2 speakers. These findings are in line with Gambi and Pickering's simulation theory of phonetic imitation (Gambi & Pickering, 2013). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Is memory better for objects than for separate single features? The temporal hypothesis.

Working memory, the system allowing for a simultaneous maintenance and processing of information, is typically conceived as a capacity limited system. A proposed method to transcend its standard maintenance capacity is to maintain multifeature objects, instead of isolated features. Several studies have shown that multifeature memory items are stored as objects instead of separate single features in working memory, this object-based maintenance being thought to result in an increase in the number of features that can be maintained. We present a series of 4 experiments that challenge the belief that object-based maintenance per se is at the origin of the better memory for features in case of multifeature item presentation. Instead, we propose an account based on the temporal parameters of the memory item's presentation, which explains memory performance in terms of the time available for encoding/consolidation per feature. (PsycINFO Database Record

An eye movement corpus study of the age-of-acquisition effect.

In the present study, we investigated the effects of word-level age of acquisition (AoA) on natural reading. Previous studies, using multiple language modalities, showed that earlier-learned words are recognized, read, spoken, and responded to faster than words learned later in life. Until now, in visual word recognition the experimental materials were limited to single-word or sentence studies. We analyzed the data of the Ghent Eye-tracking Corpus (GECO; Cop, Dirix, Drieghe, & Duyck, in press), an eyetracking corpus of participants reading an entire novel, resulting in the first eye movement megastudy of AoA effects in natural reading. We found that the ages at which specific words were learned indeed influenced reading times, above other important (correlated) lexical variables, such as word frequency and length. Shorter fixations for earlier-learned words were consistently found throughout the reading process, in both early (single-fixation durations, first-fixation durations, gaze durations) and late (total reading times) measures. Implications for theoretical accounts of AoA effects and eye movements are discussed.

Beyond associations: Do implicit beliefs play a role in smoking addiction?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Influential dual-system models of addiction suggest that an automatic system that is associative and habitual promotes drug use, whereas a controlled system that is propositional and rational inhibits drug use. It is assumed that effects on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) reflect the automatic processes that guide drug seeking. However, results have been inconsistent, challenging: (1) the validity of addiction IATs; and (2) the assumption that the automatic system contains only simple associative information. We aimed to further test the validity of IATs that are used within this field of research using an experimental design. Second, we introduced a new procedure aimed at examining the automatic activation of complex propositional knowledge, the Relational Responding Task (RRT) and examine the validity of RRT effects in the context of smoking. METHODS: In two experiments, smokers performed two different tasks: an approach/avoid IAT and a liking IAT in Experiment 1, and a smoking urges RRT and a valence IAT in Experiment 2. Smokers were tested once immediately after smoking and once after 10 hours of nicotine-deprivation. RESULTS: None of the IAT scores were affected by the deprivation manipulation. RRT scores revealed a stronger implicit desire for smoking in the deprivation condition compared to the satiation condition. CONCLUSIONS: IATs that are currently used to assess automatic processes in addiction have serious drawbacks. Furthermore, the automatic system may contain not only associations but complex drug-related beliefs as well. The RRT may be a useful and valid tool to examine these beliefs.

Cross-lingual neighborhood effects in generalized lexical decision and natural reading.

The present study assessed intra- and cross-lingual neighborhood effects, using both a generalized lexical decision task and an analysis of a large-scale bilingual eye-tracking corpus (Cop, Dirix, Drieghe, & Duyck, 2016). Using new neighborhood density and frequency measures, the general lexical decision task yielded an inhibitory cross-lingual neighborhood density effect on reading times of second language words, replicating van Heuven, Dijkstra, and Grainger (1998). Reaction times for native language words were not influenced by neighborhood density or frequency but error rates showed cross-lingual neighborhood effects depending on target word frequency. The large-scale eye movement corpus confirmed effects of cross-lingual neighborhood on natural reading, even though participants were reading a novel in a unilingual context. Especially second language reading and to a lesser extent native language reading were influenced by lexical candidates from the nontarget language, although these effects in natural reading were largely facilitatory. These results offer strong and direct support for bilingual word recognition models that assume language-independent lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record