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Lexical processes in the recognition of Japanese horizontal and vertical compounds

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A Correction to this article was published on 11 October 2018

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Abstract

This lexical decision eye-tracking study investigated whether horizontal and vertical readings elicit comparable behavioral patterns and whether reading directions modulate lexical processes. Response times and eye movements were recorded during a lexical decision task with Japanese bimorphemic compound words presented vertically. The data were then analyzed together with those obtained in a horizontal lexical decision experiment of Miwa, Libben, Dijkstra, and Baayen (2014). Linear mixed-effects analyses of response times and eye movements revealed that, although response times and first fixation durations were notably shorter in horizontal reading than vertical reading, the vertical reading elicited fewer fixations. Furthermore, while compounds were recognized largely in comparable ways regardless of reading direction, several lexical processes were found to be reading-direction-dependent. Particularly, processing of the first morpheme was modulated by reading direction in a late time frame, such that a horizontal reading advantage was observed for words with a high frequency first morpheme. All in all, the two reading directions do not only differ quantitatively in processing speed, but also qualitatively in terms of underlying processing mechanisms.

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  • 11 October 2018

    The original publication of the article contained an error

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Izaak Walton Killam scholarship from the Killam Trusts to the first author. Response time and eye movement data after data trimming, accompanying participant and item properties, will be available on the first author’s website (http://www.kojimiwa.com/publication.html). The frequency data collected from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) are published with permission of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. Authors thank Victor Kuperman and anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 19, Raum 3.22, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Koji Miwa

  2. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Ton Dijkstra

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  1. Koji Miwa
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  2. Ton Dijkstra
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Correspondence to Koji Miwa.

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Miwa, K., Dijkstra, T. Lexical processes in the recognition of Japanese horizontal and vertical compounds. Read Writ 30, 791–812 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9700-6

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