Reading Finnish compound words: eye fixations are affected by component morphemes. 1998

J Hyönä, and A Pollatsek
Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Finland. hyona@utu.fi

The role of morphemic processing in reading was investigated in 2 experiments in which participants read sentences as their eye movements were monitored. The target words were 2-morpheme Finnish compound words. In Experiment 1, the length of the component morphemes was varied and word length was held constant, and in Experiment 2, the uniqueness of the initial morpheme was varied and the rated familiarity and length of the word were held constant. The length of the initial morpheme influenced the location of the second fixation on the target word and the pattern of fixation durations (although it had a negligible influence on the gaze duration of the word). The frequency of the initial morpheme influenced the duration of the first fixation on the target word, had a substantial effect on the gaze duration, and also influenced the location of the first and second fixations on the target word. Subsidiary analyses indicated that these effects were unlikely to stem from orthographic factors such as bigram frequency.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D011932 Reading Acquiring information from text.
D005387 Finland A country in northern Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Bothnia, and Gulf of Finland, between Sweden and Russia. The capital is Helsinki. Aland Islands,Åland Islands
D005403 Fixation, Ocular Positioning and accommodation of eyes that allows the image to be brought into place on the FOVEA CENTRALIS of each eye. Focusing, Ocular,Ocular Fixation,Eye Gaze,Eye Gazes,Gaze, Eye,Gazes, Eye,Ocular Focusing
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D012438 Saccades An abrupt voluntary shift in ocular fixation from one point to another, as occurs in reading. Pursuit, Saccadic,Saccadic Eye Movements,Eye Movement, Saccadic,Eye Movements, Saccadic,Movement, Saccadic Eye,Movements, Saccadic Eye,Pursuits, Saccadic,Saccade,Saccadic Eye Movement,Saccadic Pursuit,Saccadic Pursuits
D014796 Visual Perception The selecting and organizing of visual stimuli based on the individual's past experience. Visual Processing,Perception, Visual,Processing, Visual
D014825 Vocabulary The sum or the stock of words used by a language, a group, or an individual. (From Webster, 3d ed) Vocabularies

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