Flexible letter-position coding in Chinese-English L2 bilinguals: Evidence from eye movements

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Second language acquisition
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Efficient word recognition relies on flexible letter-position coding.
• Transposed-letter primes facilitate recognition more than substituted-letter primes.
• Reading experience may enhance letter-position coding flexibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate flexible letter-position coding in second-language (L2) English reading.
• Examine the influence of English proficiency on this coding.
• Target population: native Chinese speakers learning English.

Main Methods:

• Eye-tracking methodology used to measure reading times.
• Participants read English sentences with real words and nonwords (transposed-letter and substituted-letter).
• Analysis of reading times at initial and later processing stages.

Main Results:

• Flexible letter-position coding was observed in both initial and later processing stages.
• Reading times were longer for substituted-letter nonwords than transposed-letter nonwords.
• Reading times for transposed-letter nonwords were longer than for real words, indicating letter-position processing.

Conclusions:

• Highly proficient L2 learners demonstrate flexible letter-position coding.
• Evidence suggests English proficiency may influence reading times, though power was limited.
• Proficiency did not significantly alter the nature of letter-position coding itself.