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Effects of word spacing on children’s reading: Evidence from eye movements

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Abstract

Word is important in Chinese reading. However, when inter-word spaces are inserted into Chinese text, there is no facilitation or disruption to adults’ reading. Researchers argued that there was a trade-off between word segmentation facilitation and disruption due to format unfamiliarity. To assess the trade-off hypothesis, in Experiment 1, we tested Grade 1, 2 and 3 children who have less reading experience than adults and manipulated four spacing conditions: normal unspaced, word spaced, character spaced, and nonword spaced text. In Experiment 2, we collected data from Grade 1 and 3 with the word spaced condition and normal unspaced condition. Overall, global analyses from both Experiments consistently showed that word spacing facilitated Grade 1 reading, with much reduced facilitation for higher grade readers; local measures (total reading time and second-pass reading time) replicated the same pattern in which word spacing effects were more pronounced among younger readers. In summary, we obtained greater facilitatory effects of word spacing for younger compared with elder readers, which provides strong evidence for the trade-off hypothesis.

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Notes

  1. Reading fluency test as the measure of reading ability has been used in previous studies (Lei et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2020; Yan et al., 2021). Therefore, in the present study, we also used reading fluency test to compare the reading ability for different grades. In this test, children were required to read sentences silently as quickly as they could and to judge whether the sentence was correct during a 3-min interval (see the paper of “What Is in the Naming? A 5-Year Longitudinal Study of Early Rapid Naming and Phonological Sensitivity in Relation to Subsequent Reading Skills in Both Native Chinese and English as a Second Language.”). There was 3 practice sentences and 100 test sentences in total; these were arranged by length of the sentences, and the meanings were familiar to children. For example, “太阳从西边升起 ( ×)” (Translation: The sun rise in the west). In Experiment 1, the reading fluency test score were 105.2 characters/min, 159.2 characters/min, 290.5 characters/min for G1, G2, G3 respectively, and the internal consistency coefficient alpha was 0.97. In Experiment 2, the score was 87.6 characters/min, 274.1 characters/min for G1 and G3 respectively, and the internal consistency coefficient alpha was 0.98.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 18YJC190023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Sainan Li, Yongsheng Wang, Zebo Lan, Xiaoyuan Yuan, Li Zhang & Guoli Yan

  2. Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Yongsheng Wang & Guoli Yan

  3. Tianjin Social Science Laboratory of Students’ Mental Development and Learning, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Yongsheng Wang & Guoli Yan

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  1. Sainan Li
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  2. Yongsheng Wang
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  3. Zebo Lan
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  4. Xiaoyuan Yuan
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  5. Li Zhang
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  6. Guoli Yan
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Correspondence to Yongsheng Wang.

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Li, S., Wang, Y., Lan, Z. et al. Effects of word spacing on children’s reading: Evidence from eye movements. Read Writ 35, 1019–1033 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10215-9

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