A study led by the University of Southampton (United Kingdom) has found there is no difference in the time it takes people from different countries to read and process different languages.
The research, published in the journal Cognition, finds that a person, from for example China, needs the same amount of time to read and understand a text in Mandarin that a person from Britain to read and understand a text in English –assuming that both are reading in their native language.
Professor of Experimental Psychology at Southampton, Simon Liversedge, says: “It has long been argued by some linguists that all languages have common or universal underlying principles, but it has been hard to find robust experimental evidence to support this claim. Our study goes at least part way to addressing this – by showing there is universality in the way we process language during the act of reading. It suggests no one form of written language is more efficient in conveying meaning than another.”
The study, carried out by the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Tianjin Normal University (China) and the University of Turku (Finland), compared the way three groups of people in the UK, China and Finland read their own languages.
The 25 participants of each group –one group per country– were given eight short texts to read that had been carefully translated into the three languages.
English, Mandarin and Finish were chosen because the stark differences they display in their written form –with great variation in visual presentation of words, for example alphabetic vs. logographic, spaced vs. unspaced, or agglutinative vs. non-agglutinative.
Eye tracking
The researchers used sophisticated eye-tracking equipment to evaluate the cognitive processes of the participants in each group as they read. The equipment recorded how long they spent looking at each word, phrase or paragraph.
The results of the study showed significant and substantial differences between the three language groups in relation to the nature of the eye movements of the readers and how long the participants spent in reading each individual word or phrase. For example, the Finish participants spent more time concentrating on some words compared with English readers. However, the most importantly and despite these differences is that the time it took for the readers of each language to read each complete sentence or paragraph was the same.
The authors of the study believe that more research is needed to fully understand if true universality of languages exists, but that their study represents a good first step to demonstrate that there is universality in the process of reading.
The research, published in the journal Cognition, finds that a person, from for example China, needs the same amount of time to read and understand a text in Mandarin that a person from Britain to read and understand a text in English –assuming that both are reading in their native language.
Professor of Experimental Psychology at Southampton, Simon Liversedge, says: “It has long been argued by some linguists that all languages have common or universal underlying principles, but it has been hard to find robust experimental evidence to support this claim. Our study goes at least part way to addressing this – by showing there is universality in the way we process language during the act of reading. It suggests no one form of written language is more efficient in conveying meaning than another.”
The study, carried out by the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), Tianjin Normal University (China) and the University of Turku (Finland), compared the way three groups of people in the UK, China and Finland read their own languages.
The 25 participants of each group –one group per country– were given eight short texts to read that had been carefully translated into the three languages.
English, Mandarin and Finish were chosen because the stark differences they display in their written form –with great variation in visual presentation of words, for example alphabetic vs. logographic, spaced vs. unspaced, or agglutinative vs. non-agglutinative.
Eye tracking
The researchers used sophisticated eye-tracking equipment to evaluate the cognitive processes of the participants in each group as they read. The equipment recorded how long they spent looking at each word, phrase or paragraph.
The results of the study showed significant and substantial differences between the three language groups in relation to the nature of the eye movements of the readers and how long the participants spent in reading each individual word or phrase. For example, the Finish participants spent more time concentrating on some words compared with English readers. However, the most importantly and despite these differences is that the time it took for the readers of each language to read each complete sentence or paragraph was the same.
The authors of the study believe that more research is needed to fully understand if true universality of languages exists, but that their study represents a good first step to demonstrate that there is universality in the process of reading.
English
