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Prevalence of Spelling Errors Affects Reading Behavior Across Languages

  • Victor Kuperman*
  • , Amalia Bar-On
  • , Raymond Bertram
  • , Rober Boshra
  • , Avital Deutsch
  • , Aki Juhani Kyröläinen
  • , Barbara Mathiopoulou
  • , Gaisha Oralova
  • , Athanassios Protopapas
  • *Corresponding author for this work
  • McMaster University
  • University of Turku
  • Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • University of Amsterdam
  • University of Oslo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

This cross-linguistic study investigated the impact of spelling errors on reading behavior in five languages (Chinese, English, Finnish, Greek, and Hebrew). Learning theories predict that correct and incorrectspelling alternatives (e.g., “tomorrow” and “tommorrow”) provide competing cues to the sound andmeaning of a word: The closer the alternatives are to each other in their frequency of occurrence, themore uncertain the reader is regarding the spelling of that word. An information-theoretic measure ofentropy was used as an index of uncertainty. Based on theories of learning, we predicted that higher entropywould lead to slower recognition of words even when they are spelled correctly. This predictionwas confirmed in eye-tracking sentence-reading experiments in five languages widely variable in theirwriting systems’ phonology and morphology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1974-1993
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume150
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

Funding

FundersFunder number
CFI Leaders Opportunity Fund
OntarioMinistry of Research and Innovation
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaInsight Development430-2019-00851
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada895-2016-1008
Vector Institute

    Keywords

    • Cross-linguistic studies
    • Eye movements
    • Learning
    • Reading
    • Spelling

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