An eye-tracking study on Hindi-English bilinguals' reading per repertoire and domain

Abstract

Bilingualism research has shown that bilingualism usually is manifested with unequal levels of and domain-specific linguistic repertoires in addition to prevalent code-switching. This study investigates Hindi-English bilingual speakers’ reading patterns per verbal repertoire and domain to investigate whether the domain-specific verbal usage is spilled over to reading skills in the relevant domain. 60 participants were divided into four written linguistic conditions: Hindi (Romanized), Hindi ( Devanagari), English, and English-Hindi code-mixing. Each condition consisted of 30 trials with written excerpts in five domains of discourse: textbook, news, fiction, informal and semi-formal conversations. During trials, participants’ reading time, total fixation duration, and fixation count were measured using a Tobii screen-based eye-tracker. Results show that reading performance in English is significantly better than any other condition, especially in two genres: fiction and textbook domains. This indicates potential disparity between spoken and written language skills, and further implies that formal literacy training may be a defining factor to reduce cognitive loads.