How the use of segmentation signs in compound reading affects reading behavior: an eye-tracking study

Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of visual segmenta-tion, complexity, and context on the cognitive processing of compounds in German Easy Language. By presenting compounds in different boundary conditions, we determined whether a segmentation cue facilitates the processing of compounds presented with and without contextual information. The study was conducted with unimpaired adults and with hearing-impaired pupils, representing one of the target groups of Easy Language. The results indicate that visual segmentation facilitates processing of compounds for pupils with low literacy skills. However, they only benefit from segmentation when morpheme boundaries are marked in a subtle way, i.e., without strikingly deviating from the standard version. Pupils with higher literacy skills and unimpaired adults do not profit from segmentation. Even though hyphenation slows down compound processing for unimpaired readers, initial processing advantages of hyphenated over concatenated compounds emerged, which is explained by the fact that hyphenation forces a morpheme-based access and enables fast recognition of the compound’s first constituent. However, it hinders readers from accessing the compound via the direct route and thus slows down the processing of the compound as a whole. Furthermore, unimpaired readers and hearing-impaired pupils process compounds faster when presented with context.