Effects of orthographic consistency on eye movement behavior: German and English children and adults process the same words differently

Anne K Rau; Kristina Moll; Margaret J Snowling; Karin Landerl

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2014.09.012

Effects of orthographic consistency on eye movement behavior: German and English children and adults process the same words differently

J Exp Child Psychol. 2015 Feb:130:92-105. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.09.012. Epub 2014 Oct 29.

Authors

Anne K Rau¹, Kristina Moll², Margaret J Snowling³, Karin Landerl⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: anne.rau@uni-tuebingen.de.
² Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 80337 München, Germany.
³ Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK; Department of Experimental Psychology and St. John's College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3JP, UK.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany; Department of Psychology, University of Graz, 8010 Graz, Austria.

PMID: 25462034
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.09.012

Abstract

The current study investigated the time course of cross-linguistic differences in word recognition. We recorded eye movements of German and English children and adults while reading closely matched sentences, each including a target word manipulated for length and frequency. Results showed differential word recognition processes for both developing and skilled readers. Children of the two orthographies did not differ in terms of total word processing time, but this equal outcome was achieved quite differently. Whereas German children relied on small-unit processing early in word recognition, English children applied small-unit decoding only upon rereading-possibly when experiencing difficulties in integrating an unfamiliar word into the sentence context. Rather unexpectedly, cross-linguistic differences were also found in adults in that English adults showed longer processing times than German adults for nonwords. Thus, although orthographic consistency does play a major role in reading development, cross-linguistic differences are detectable even in skilled adult readers.

Keywords: Cross-linguistic; Eye movements; Frequency effect; Length effect; Orthographic consistency; Word recognition.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Age Factors
Analysis of Variance
Child
England
Eye Movements*
Female
Germany
Humans
Language*
Linguistics
Male
Reaction Time
Reading*
Recognition, Psychology*
Young Adult