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The word and character frequency effect in Chinese natural reading.

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Title: The word and character frequency effect in Chinese natural reading.
Authors: Sui, Longjiao1 (AUTHOR) longjiao.sui@dlmu.edu.cn, Woumans, Evy2 (AUTHOR), Duyck, Wouter3,4 (AUTHOR), Boeve, Sam3 (AUTHOR), Dirix, Nicolas3 (AUTHOR) Nicolas.Dirix@UGent.be
Source: Reading & Writing. May2026, Vol. 39 Issue 5, p1877-1900. 24p.
Subject Terms: *Word frequency, *Word recognition, *Reading, Eye tracking, Linguistics
Abstract: The word frequency effect, where high-frequency words are processed faster than low-frequency ones, has been extensively studied in alphabetic writing systems. The effect has also been observed in Chinese reading, a language that differs enormously from alphabetic languages, not only in appearance but also in the nature of the words. In the present study, we investigated the word and character frequency effects in Chinese natural reading by analysing reading data from an eye-tracking corpus in which participants read an entire novel (GECO-CN). The results show that as character frequency in Chinese increases, the facilitative word frequency effect tends to flatten or even reverse, and vice versa. These findings suggest that Chinese sentence processing is influenced by the frequencies of both words and their constituent characters, indicating the importance of considering character frequencies when studying the word frequency effect. In addition, these results also provide a plausible explanation for the inconsistent character effects found previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Reading & Writing is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: The word frequency effect, where high-frequency words are processed faster than low-frequency ones, has been extensively studied in alphabetic writing systems. The effect has also been observed in Chinese reading, a language that differs enormously from alphabetic languages, not only in appearance but also in the nature of the words. In the present study, we investigated the word and character frequency effects in Chinese natural reading by analysing reading data from an eye-tracking corpus in which participants read an entire novel (GECO-CN). The results show that as character frequency in Chinese increases, the facilitative word frequency effect tends to flatten or even reverse, and vice versa. These findings suggest that Chinese sentence processing is influenced by the frequencies of both words and their constituent characters, indicating the importance of considering character frequencies when studying the word frequency effect. In addition, these results also provide a plausible explanation for the inconsistent character effects found previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Reading & Writing is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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              Text: May2026
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