Gagl Benjamin, Gregorova Klara, Golch Julius, Hawelka Stefan, Sassenhagen Jona, Tavano Alessandro, Poeppel David, Fiebach Christian J
Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Nat Hum Behav. 2022 Mar;6(3):429-442. doi: 10.1038/s41562-021-01215-4. Epub 2021 Dec 6.
Across languages, the speech signal is characterized by a predominant modulation of the amplitude spectrum between about 4.3 and 5.5 Hz, reflecting the production and processing of linguistic information chunks (syllables and words) every ~200 ms. Interestingly, ~200 ms is also the typical duration of eye fixations during reading. Prompted by this observation, we demonstrate that German readers sample written text at ~5 Hz. A subsequent meta-analysis of 142 studies from 14 languages replicates this result and shows that sampling frequencies vary across languages between 3.9 Hz and 5.2 Hz. This variation systematically depends on the complexity of the writing systems (character-based versus alphabetic systems and orthographic transparency). Finally, we empirically demonstrate a positive correlation between speech spectrum and eye movement sampling in low-skilled non-native readers, with tentative evidence from post hoc analysis suggesting the same relationship in low-skilled native readers. On the basis of this convergent evidence, we propose that during reading, our brain's linguistic processing systems imprint a preferred processing rate-that is, the rate of spoken language production and perception-onto the oculomotor system.
在各种语言中，语音信号的特征是在大约4.3至5.5赫兹之间的幅度谱有显著调制，这反映了大约每200毫秒对语言信息块（音节和单词）的生成和处理。有趣的是，200毫秒也是阅读过程中眼睛注视的典型持续时间。受此观察结果的启发，我们证明德国读者以约5赫兹的频率对书面文本进行采样。随后对来自14种语言的142项研究进行的荟萃分析重复了这一结果，并表明不同语言的采样频率在3.9赫兹至5.2赫兹之间变化。这种变化系统地取决于书写系统的复杂性（基于字符的系统与字母系统以及正字法透明度）。最后，我们通过实证证明了低技能非母语读者的语音频谱与眼动采样之间存在正相关，事后分析的初步证据表明低技能母语读者中也存在相同的关系。基于这些相互印证的证据，我们提出在阅读过程中，我们大脑的语言处理系统会将一种偏好的处理速率——即口语产生和感知的速率——印刻到动眼系统上。
