Sentence context modulates the neighborhood frequency effect in Chinese reading: evidence from eye movements.

Abstract

In the current study, we conducted two eye-tracking reading experiments to explore whether sentence context can influence neighbor effects in word recognition during Chinese reading. Chinese readers read sentences in which the targets’ orthographic neighbors were either plausible or implausible with the pre-target context. The results revealed that the neighbor effect was influenced by context: the context in the biased condition (where only targets but not neighbors can fit in the pre-target context) evoked a significantly weaker inhibitory neighbor effect than in the neutral condition (where both targets and neighbors can fit in the pre-target context). These results indicate that contextual information can be used to modulate neighbor effects during on-line sentence reading in Chinese.