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Reading in Thai: Visual and Attentional Processes

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Attention and Vision in Language Processing

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Abstract

Traditionally, reading research has focused on a limited number of languages and scripts. In order to delineate between universal and orthography-specific processes as well as build more comprehensive and representative universal models of reading, it is essential that we broaden this research (see Frost 2012). Although the overall goal of reading is to form a meaningful mental representation of text through decoding various visually complex symbols, the processes involved in attaining this goal substantially differ between orthographies. In order to effectively read and comprehend a text, readers need to attend to the distinctive visual features of the script which interface with the language of the reader. In this chapter, research on Thai has been used to illustrate how the distinctive features of orthography can influence the visual and attentional processes involved in visual word recognition and reading. The four areas of research that are focused on are (1) reading without interword spaces, (2) prominence of initial letter position and transposed-letter effects, (3) parafoveal-on-foveal effects, and (4) processing of lexical tone.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Tones are marked in the Thai examples cited in this paper as follows; 0 = mid, 1 = low, 2 = falling, 3 = high, 4 = rising. This is based on the system that was developed at the Linguistics Research Unit (LRU) of Chulalongkorn University (Luksaneeyanawin 1993). IPA transcription is used for the transcription of all other Thai text.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour Campus, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia

    Heather Winskel

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  1. Heather Winskel
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Correspondence to Heather Winskel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Ramesh Kumar Mishra

  2. Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Narayanan Srinivasan

  3. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Falk Huettig

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Winskel, H. (2015). Reading in Thai: Visual and Attentional Processes. In: Mishra, R., Srinivasan, N., Huettig, F. (eds) Attention and Vision in Language Processing. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2443-3_7

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