Eye Movement Traces of Linguistic Knowledge in Native and Non-Native Reading
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opmi_a_00084.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.71 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
01054e8c3478e635a783765536a25ffa
Author(s)
Berzak, Yevgeni
Levy, Roger
Date Issued
June 5, 2023
Journal
Open Mind
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Yevgeni Berzak, Roger Levy; Eye Movement Traces of Linguistic Knowledge in Native and Non-Native Reading. Open Mind 2023; 7 179–196.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The detailed study of eye movements in reading has shed considerable light into how language processing unfolds in real time. Yet eye movements in reading remain inadequately studied in non-native (L2) readers, even though much of the world’s population is multilingual. Here we present a detailed analysis of the quantitative functional influences of word length, frequency, and predictability on eye movement measures in reading in a large, linguistically diverse sample of non-native English readers. We find many similar qualitative effects as in L1 readers, but crucially also a proficiency-sensitive “lexicon-context tradeoff”. The most proficient L2 readers’ eye movements approach an L1 pattern, but as L2 proficiency diminishes, readers’ eye movements become less sensitive to a word’s predictability in context and more sensitive to word frequency, which is context-invariant. This tradeoff supports a rational, experience-dependent account of how context-driven expectations are deployed in L2 language processing.
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00084
