J Exp Psychol Gen. 2025 Apr 14. doi: 10.1037/xge0001775. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Recent statistical learning views of reading posit that writing systems present to their readers a wide range of statistical regularities which are leveraged to process printed texts. While substantial research has focused on the “vertical” correlations between orthographic, phonological, and semantic units in a given writing system, here we employ information-theoretic measures to further consider “horizontal” regularities-the extent to which printed units predict and are predicted by other printed units, in one writing system compared to another. As a first step, we present a novel information-theoretic measure that captures how horizontal regularities constrain lexical access given the distribution of orthographic information in a writing system and considering realistic retinal and cognitive constraints. We then present a series of empirical studies serving as proof of concept, from both single-word reading experiments and analyses of eye movements during naturalistic reading, which examine how a reader who has internalized these regularities could leverage them for efficient uncertainty reduction regarding printed information while reading on-the-fly. Our findings converge on high-order general principles fleshed out in terms of explicit computational mechanisms that simultaneously apply to a wide range of writing systems and that can potentially explain behavioral outcomes across the trajectory of reading development and reading skill. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
PMID:40232803 | DOI:10.1037/xge0001775
