The role of word boundary information in Chinese sentence reading among primary school students

Abstract

In Chinese reading, the function of word boundary information has been examined through various studies using the methods of inserting spaces in between Chinese wordings. As recent research focus on the role of word boundary among children, our study aims to examine how word boundaries would affect students’ sentence reading with the use of Eye Movement analysis with Hidden Markov Models (EMHMM). It is discovered that when spacing was inserted in the sentences, students obtained a significant lower accuracy in answering comprehension questions than the normal sentence condition, suggesting that spacing may indeed interfere with students’ semantic integration. From the Eye Movement analysis, we also discovered that there are two groups of Eye Movement patterns adopted by junior students in Hong Kong, with one pattern results in shorter sentence reading time in normal word condition. The word writing abilities of students was also found to be a significant predictor of students’ eye movement pattern. The findings revealed that inserting spacing into sentences is not an efficient way to promote students’ comprehension skills, and various factors such as word retrieval rate, word knowledge, word writing abilities and rapid naming are related to one’s reading performance and eye movement pattern,