Does meaningful background speech modulate predictability effects during Chinese reading?

Abstract

Previous research indicates that background speech disrupts reading comprehension processes, but it remains unclear whether the disruption derives from semantic or phonological speech properties, and whether it affects early lexical processing or later sentence integration. Native Chinese speaking participants read sentences containing high- or low-predictability words under meaningful Chinese speech, meaningless Uyghur speech or silence conditions. Results showed that Chinese but not Uyghur speech produced increased total fixations compared to reading in silence, suggesting disruption was semantic in nature. While a standard predictability effect was comparable across background speech conditions in target word analyses, this effect disappeared in the Chinese speech condition in later measures and regions. The findings suggest that Chinese background speech may delay higher order (post-lexical) processing associated with sentence integration during reading, with implications for the Interference-by-Process hypothesis.