Spaces Enhance Word Segmentation and Comprehension in Tacit Reading

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 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.