Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Age of acquisition effects in Chinese two-character compound words: a megastudy of eye movements during reading

  • Brief Report
  • Published:
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Words learned earlier in life are processed faster than words learned later in life. In Chinese, the age of acquisition (AoA) effect has been extensively studied in one-character words, yet no studies have explored this effect in compound words. Given that compound words are a widespread word type and are processed differently than one-character words, it is unclear how AoA affects compound word processing. The present study examined the role of multiple variables in the processing of Chinese two-character compound words based on a database of eye-movement measures. We focused on the AoA effect from the whole compound word and the first and second characters. We found that whole-word AoA and first-character AoA have an early and long-lasting influence, with no AoA effect from the second character. The results indicated that two-character compound words are accessed via the character and whole word simultaneously. These findings are discussed with respect to theories of the AoA effect.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The materials, data, and analysis scripts are available through the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6vn43/). None of the experiments were preregistered.

Notes

  1. We selected 2143 Chinese two-character words as target words, including 2143 first characters and 2143 second characters. Among the 4286 characters, AoA data for 3960 characters were extracted from Liu et al. (2007), and AoA data for the remaining 326 characters were collected in the present study. Among the 326 characters, 64 are unique and the rest are overlapping.

    We invited eighteen participants to rate the AoA of the 64 Chinese characters, with instructions and procedures similar to those of Liu et al. (2007). We found that AoA significantly correlated with word frequency (r = -.02) and the number of strokes (r =.70). These results indicated that the L1 AoA data collected in the present study were valid. The specific AoA data and the corresponding source of each Chinese character can be found in the Materials section (https://osf.io/6vn43/).

  2. We have a total of 177407 observations, of which 169067 (95%) observations have word frequency values of the pretarget words. The remaining 8340 observations had no word frequency values because the pretarget word may be a person’s name or a punctuation mark. We used median interpolation to address the missing data. The word frequencies of pretarget words are presented in the Material Section (https://osf.io/6vn43/).

  3. As the data pattern was consistent across the four measures, only two measures, GD and TFD, are shown in Fig. 3. This was also the case for Fig. 4.

  4. We noted that there was an inverted character frequency effect, that is, compounds with higher frequency first characters were processed slower than compounds with lower frequency first characters. This finding bears resemblance to analogous findings observed by Cui et al. (2013, 2021), Tsang et al. (2018) and Yu et al. (2019). For example, when reading Chinese two-character compound words, Cui et al. (2021) found that having a frequent than an infrequent first character resulted in longer fixation times. Although this finding might look surprising initially, it became more sensible when we considered morphological family size (Cui et al., 2013, 2021; Hyönä et al., 2004). Specifically, the low frequency first character could form a low number of words and provide a high constraint over the second character compared to the high frequency first character. Consequently, the frequency of the first character influenced the processing of the second character and the whole compound word, with longer fixation durations for high frequency first character than low frequency first character.

References

  • Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 390–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bai, L., Ma, T., Dunlap, S., & Chen, B. (2013). Age of acquisition affects the retrieval of grammatical category information. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(4), 786–800.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bakhtiar, M., & Weekes, B. (2015). Lexico-semantic effects on word naming in Persian: Does age of acquisition have an effect? Memory & Cognition, 43(2). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0472-4

  • Balota, D. A., Cortese, M. J., Sergent-Marshall, S. D., Spieler, D. H., & Yap, M. J. (2004). Visual word recognition of single-syllable words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283–316.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2018). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. Version 1.1–33. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4

  • Bertram, R., & Hyönä, J. (2003). The length of a complex word modifies the role of morphological structure: Evidence from eye movements when reading short and long Finnish com pounds. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 615–634.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brysbaert, M., & Ellis, A. W. (2016). Aphasia and age of acquisition: Are early-learned words more resilient? Aphasiology, 30(11), 1240–1263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brysbaert, M., Van Wijnendaele, I., & De Deyne, S. (2000). Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks. Acta Psychologica, 104(2), 215–226.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Butterworth, B. (1983). Lexical representation. In B. Butterworth (Ed.), Language production II: Development, writing and other language processes (pp. 257–294). Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cai, Q., & Brysbaert, M. (2010). SUBTLEX-CH: Chinese word and character frequencies based on film subtitles. PLoS One, 5(6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010729

  • Caramazza, A., Laudanna, A., & Romani, C. (1988). Lexical access and inflectional morphology. Cognition, 28, 297–332.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, Y.-N., & Lee, C. Y. (2020). Age of acquisition effects on traditional Chinese character naming and lexical decision. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(2). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01787-8

  • Chang, Y.-N., Monaghan, P., & Welbourne, S. (2019). A computational model of reading across development: Effects of literacy onset on language processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 108, 104025.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, B. G., Zhou, H. X., Dunlap, S., & Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Age of acquisition effects in reading Chinese: Evidence in favour of the arbitrary mapping hypothesis. British Journal of Psychology, 98(3), 499–516.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, B., Dent, K., You, W., & Wu, G. (2009). Age of acquisition affects early orthographic processing during Chinese character recognition. Acta Psychologica, 130(3), 196–203.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cui, L., Wang, J., Zhang, Y., Cong, F., Zhang, W., & Hyönä, J. (2021). Compound word frequency modifies the effect of character frequency in reading Chinese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(4), 610–633.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cui, L., Yan, G., Bai, X., Hyönä, J., Wang, S., & Liversedge, S. P. (2013). Processing of compound-word characters in reading Chinese: An eye movement- contingent display change study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 527–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dirix, N., & Duyck, W. (2017a). An eye movement corpus analysis of the age-of-acquisition effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24, 1915–1921.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dirix, N., & Duyck, W. (2017b). The first- and second-language age of acquisition effect in first- and second-language book reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 97, 103–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, A. W., & Lambon Ralph, M. A. (2000). Age of acquisition effects in adult lexical processing reflect loss of plasticity in maturing systems: Insights from connectionist networks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1103–1123.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Elsherif, M. M., Catling, J. C., & Frisson, S. (2020). Two words as one: A multi-naming investigation of the age-of-acquisition effect in compound-word processing. Memory & Cognition, 48, 511–525.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elsherif, M. M., Preece, E., & Catling, J. C. (2023). Age-of-acquisition effects: A literature review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 49(5), 812–847.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fox, J., & Weisberg, S. (2010). An R companion to applied regression. SAGE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilhooly, K. J., & Logie, R. H. (1980). Age-of-acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 12, 395–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hyönä, J., Bertram, R., & Pollatsek, A. (2004). Are long compound words identified serially via their constituents? Evidence from an eye-movement-contingent display change study. Memory & Cognition, 32(4), 523–532. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195844

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joseph, H. S. S. L., Wonnacott, E., Forbes, P., & Nation, K. (2014). Becoming a written word: Eye movements reveal order of acquisition effects following incidental exposure to new words during silent reading. Cognition, 133, 238–248.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J. (2005). Age-of-acquisition effects in word and picture identification. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 684–712.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J. (2018). Experience with compound words influences their processing: An eye movement investigation with English compound words. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71, 103–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J., & Rayner, K. (2003). Investigating the effects of a set of intercorrelated variables on eye fixation durations in reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 29, 1312–1318.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J., & Rayner, K. (2006). The role of age-of-acquisition and word frequency in reading: Evidence from eye fixation durations. Visual Cognition, 13, 846–863.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J., & Sheridan, H. (2020). The time course of age-of-acquisition effects on eye movements during reading: Evidence from survival analyses. Memory & Cognition, 48(5). https://doi.org/10.3758/S13421-019-00963-Z

  • Juhasz, B. J., Gullick, M. M., & Shesler, L. W. (2011). The effects of age-of-acquisition on ambiguity resolution: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 4, 1–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Juhasz, B. J., Lai, Y. H., & Woodcock, M. L. (2015). A database of 629 English compound words: Ratings of familiarity, lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, age of acquisition, imageability, and sensory experience. Behav Res, 47, 1004–1019.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karimi, H., & Diaz, M. (2020). When phonological neighborhood density both facilitates and impedes: Age of acquisition and name agreement interact with phonological neighborhood during word production. Memory and Cognition, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01042-4

  • Lexicon of Common Words in Contemporary Chinese Research Team. (2008). Lexicon of common words in contemporary Chinese. The Commercial Press. https://doi.org/10.6129/CJP.2006.4804.03

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Li, X., Huang, L., Yao, P., & Hyönä, J. (2022). Universal and specific reading mechanisms across different writing systems. Nature Review Psychology, 1, 133–144.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Y., Shu, H., & Li, P. (2007). Word naming and psycholinguistic norms: Chinese. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 192–198.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Y., Hao, M., Shu, H., Tan, L., & Weekes, B. (2008). Age-of-acquisition effects on oral reading in Chinese. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(2), 344–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monaghan, J., & Ellis, A. W. (2002). What exactly interacts with spelling—Sound consistency in word naming? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 28(1), 183–206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollatsek, A., Hyönä, J., & Bertram, R. (2000). The role of morphological constituents in reading Finnish compound words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 26, 820–833.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org

    Google Scholar 

  • Taft, M., & Forster, K. I. (1975). Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 638–647.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsang, Y., Huang, J., Lui, M., Xue, M., Chan, Y. W. F., Wang, S., & Chen, H. C. (2018). MELD-SCH: A megastudy of lexical decision in simplified Chinese. Behavioral Research Methods, 50, 1763–1777.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Loon-Vervoorn, W. A. (1989). Eigenschappen van basiswoorden. Swets & Zeitlinger.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Heuven, W. J. B., Mandera, P., Keuleers, E., & Brysbaert, M. (2014). SUBTLEX-UK: A new and improved word frequency database for British English. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 1176–1190.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, J., Jiang, X., & Chen, B. G. (2023). Second language age of acquisition effects in a word naming task: A regression analysis of ERP data. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 66, 101125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, X., & Li, J. (2020). Concreteness/abstractness ratings for two-character Chinese words in MELD-SCH. PLoS One, 15(6), e0232133.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, X., Li, J., & Guo, S. (2021). Age of acquisition ratings for 19,716 simplified Chinese words. Behav Res, 53, 558–573.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • You, W. P., Chen, B. C., & Dunlap, S. (2009). Frequency trajectory effects in Chinese character recognition: Evidence for the arbitrary mapping hypothesis. Cognition, 110(1), 39–35.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yu, L., Liu, Y., & Reichle, E. D. (2019). A largescale eye-movement study of Chinese reading: Implications for models of reading [conference session]. In Oral presentation given at the 20th European conference on eye movements.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, G., Yao, P., Ma, G., Wang, J., Zhou, J., Huang, L., Xu, P., Chen, L., Chen, S., Gu, J., Wei, W., Cheng, X., Hua, H., Liu, P., Lou, Y., Shen, W., Bao, Y., Liu, J., Lin, N., & Li, X. (2022). The database of eye-movement measures on words in Chinese reading. Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01464-6

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank the editor, Marc Brysbaert, and Barbara J. Juhasz for the helpful and constructive comments. We thank Xingshan Li and Guangyao Zhang for their help in using of the eye-movement database.

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (17ZDA305), the Discipline Team Support Program of Beijing Language and Culture University (2023YGF07), the Project of School of Psychology at Beijing Language and Culture University (supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”) (19YJ130004), and the Project of the Construction of the Advanced Disciplines in Universities in Beijing to Xin Jiang; and the Science Foundation of Beijing Language and Culture University (supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”) (21YBB27) to Jue Wang.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Jue Wang & Xin Jiang

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Jue Wang & Baoguo Chen

Authors
  1. Jue Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Baoguo Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Xin Jiang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xin Jiang.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wang, J., Chen, B. & Jiang, X. Age of acquisition effects in Chinese two-character compound words: a megastudy of eye movements during reading. Psychon Bull Rev 31, 166–175 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02329-8

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02329-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation