Abstract
Introduction and MethodThis paper presents a corpus of sentence level eye movement parameters for unbalanced bilingual first language (L1) and second-language (L2) reading and monolingual reading of a complete novel (56 000 words). We present important sentence-level basic eye movement parameters of both bilingual and monolingual natural reading extracted from this large data corpus.Results and ConclusionBilingual L2 reading patterns show longer sentence reading times (20%), more fixations (21%), shorter saccades (12%) and less word skipping (4.6%), than L1 reading patterns. Regression rates are the same for L1 and L2 reading. These results could indicate, analogous to a previous simulation with the E-Z reader model in the literature, that it is primarily the speeding up of lexical access that drives both L1 and L2 reading development. Bilingual L1 reading does not differ in any major way from monolingual reading. This contrasts with predictions made by the weaker links account, which predicts a bilingual disadvantage in language processing caused by divided exposure between languages.
Highlights
Psycholinguistics has gained a good understanding of monolingual reading behavior
For the count variable and the binomial variables we report the p-values for the significant effects
The goal of this study was twofold: a) to compare the eye movement pattern of bilinguals reading in L1 vs. reading in L2 and b) to compare the eye movement pattern of bilinguals reading in L1 vs. monolinguals reading in the mother tongue
Summary
Psycholinguistics has gained a good understanding of monolingual reading behavior. Because of the increased globalization of our multicultural society, more and more people acquire, apart from their mother tongue (L1), one or more other languages It is estimated that about half of the world’s population has some knowledge of more than one language, and can considered to be bilingual, following the common Grosjean definition: “bilinguals are those people who need and use two (or more) languages in their everyday lives” [1]. Current models of eye movements during reading still focus exclusively on PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0134008. Bi- and Monolingual Eye Movements during Natural Reading. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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