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Reading minds in motion: Mouse tracking reveals transposed-character effects in Chinese compound word recognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2020

Yu-Cheng Lin Open the ORCID record for Yu-Cheng Lin [Opens in a new window]  and
Pei-Ying Lin
Yu-Cheng Lin*
Affiliation:
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Pei-Ying Lin
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
*
*Corresponding author. Email: yucheng.lin@utrgv.edu
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Abstract

This study investigated the development of character transposition effects during Chinese compound word recognition via computer mouse movements instead of the conventional key presses. Empirical evidence to reveal the impacts of vocabulary knowledge, grade level, and whole word frequency on Chinese transposed-character effect is lacking. In the present study, we measured the transposed-character effect in two groups of Taiwanese children (second and fourth graders) in a mouse-tracking lexical-decision task including nonwords derived from real words by transposing two characters (e.g., “習學” from “學習” [learning]) and control nonwords in which two characters are replaced (e.g., “以修”). Our results indicate that participants showed longer mouse movement times and larger spatial attraction in recognizing transposed-character nonwords than in replaced-character nonwords, suggesting that the dominant role of whole-word representation in processing Chinese compound words. Our results also further demonstrate that how the degree of character transposition was affected by vocabulary knowledge, grade level, and word frequency.

Keywords

mouse-trackingreading developmenttransposed-character effect
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , July 2020 , pp. 727 - 751
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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