Development Of Perceptual Span And Speed During Elementary School Yeas In Chinese Reading:Evidence From Eye Movements

Three experiments including six sub-experiments were conducted to explore development of reading span and speed during elementary school years.In Experiment1, gaze-contingent moving-window technique was used to explore the effect of masking material on perceptual span of Chinese reading.26college students participated. Their eye movements were recorded with SR Research EyeLink eye tracker.130sentences were presented in seven viewing conditions (R1、R2、R3、R4、L1R4、 L2R4and whole line) to examine the perceptual span of college students in different masking conditions. The results showed:(1) Compared with symbol masking condition, the reading efficiency in character masking condition was lower, average fixation time was longer and saccade amplitude was smaller.(2) The participants could obtain useful information from an asymmetric region extending roughly1character space to the left of fixation to about2-3character spaces to the right of fixation in the symbol masking condition, and the perceptual span extended1character space to the left of fixation to about3-4character spaces to the right of fixation in the character masking condition. In summary, the perceptual span is larger but the reading efficiency is lower in the character masking condition than those of symbol masking.In Experiment2, gaze-contingent moving-window technique was used to explore the development of perceptual span in Chinese reading.24third graders,24fifth graders and24college students participated in the experiment. Their eye movements were recorded with SR Research EyeLink2K eye tracker.120sentences were presented in six viewing conditions (R0, L1R1, L2R2, L3R3, L4R4and whole line) to examine the perceptual span of participants in different conditions. The results showed:(1) Ages, material difficulties and reading skill affected perceptual span independently.(2) The third graders could obtain useful information from a region about1-2character spaces to the right of fixation, and the perceptual span of the fifth graders and adults was about2-3character spaces to the right of fixation.(3) Compared with easy materials, the reading efficiency of reading difficult materials was lower, average fixation time was longer, perceptual span and forward saccade amplitude was smaller.(4)Perceptual span of higher readers was larger than that of slower readers, especially in reading easy materials. In summary, the perceptual span is affected by age, difficulty of materials and reading ability. The perceptual span of reading is larger with the development of age and reading ability, and the readers can get larger perceptual span of easy material than difficult ones.In Experiment3and4, for the purpose of studying preview effects of different type words. Using the boundary technique, the preview of a character was either correct or visually dissimilar and meaningless but resembling a Chinese character. The results showed that preview effect was equal for monomorphemic word, compound word and phrase. And more importantly, we have found marginal significant parafoveal-on-foveal effect for words.Experiments5and6were undertaken to examine whether there is an age-related change in the speed with which readers can capture visual information during fixations of word N and N+l in reading. Children’s and adults’eye movements were recorded as they read sentences that were presented either normally or as disappearing text. The disappearing text manipulation had a surprisingly small effect on the children. Readers do produce longer fixations but fewer refixations for disappearing text than for normal text.In sum, reading efficiency of primary school students is increased with the development of age. Higher graders get the same perceptual span, the preview effect and information extraction speed as the adults in Chinese reading. To some extent, the current study’s results support the parallel processing model.