Spaces enhance word segmentation and comprehension in tacit reading

Mayumi Toshima, Tetsuo Ishikawa, Ken Mogi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

There are a lot of types of written language systems all over the world. The Japanese writing system uses ideographic and phonetic symbols without spaces between words, where the ability of finding the boundary between words is expected to have a positive correlation with the ability of general language comprehension. Is such a correlation to be found in languages (e.g., English) where words are conventionally separated by spaces between them? Here we report a study on how spaces put on the boundary of two adjacent words enhance tacit reading texts. We conducted a "slash task" where our subjects whose first language was Japanese were instructed to place a slash between adjacent words of sentences written continuously without spaces between the words in typical, short and easy sentences. Our data illuminate the role of "active segmentation" in language comprehension.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Neural Networks - 8th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2011
Pages76-82
Number of pages7
EditionPART 1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Event8th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2011 - Guilin, China
Duration: 2011 May 292011 Jun 1

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
NumberPART 1
Volume6675 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other8th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2011
Country/TerritoryChina
CityGuilin
Period11/5/2911/6/1

Keywords

  • Language
  • learning
  • segmentation
  • tacit reading
  • word

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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