The role of predictive and preview effects in Mongolian reading: evidence from eye movements

TL;DR

This study explores how context and preview information affect reading in Mongolian, using eye-tracking to compare with horizontal scripts.

Contribution

The study provides new insights into contextual predictability and preview effects in vertical Mongolian reading.

Findings

Predictability and previewing significantly affected temporal indicators in Mongolian reading.

No significant effects were found on skipping rates or interactions between predictability and previewing.

Unique Mongolian reading features may reduce parafoveal processing of preview information.

Abstract

The research on contextual predictability in reading has been thoroughly investigated in the context of horizontal text comprehension. However, the performance of contextual predictive effects in Mongolian vertical reading remains unknown.

To explore this, we conducted an eye-tracking study using a boundary paradigm. Our study aimed to investigate contextual predictability and preview effects in Mongolian reading.

We found significant main effects of predictability and previewing on temporal indicators. However, there were no significant effects on skipping rates, and no interaction between predictability and previewing was observed.

We speculate that the unique reading orientation and writing features of Mongolian, compared to horizontally read phonetic scripts, reduce the parafoveal processing of preview information, leading to lower skipping rates in Mongolian reading.

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