Fixation Location Effects During Reading Mongolian Words:Evidence From Eye Movements

Fixation location effect plays an important role in eye movements researches for reading activities.And it is claimed that the fixation locations in reading are complexity determined,with influences both from low-level oculomotor factors and higher level linguistic factors.Previous researches have found different results for different languages in many instances.So there is a long-standing debate concerning eye movement control in reading.Mongolian language is one of alphabetic languages.And Mongolian writing is top to down style,there is spaces between words,but no spaces within word.The goal of the present study was to investigate during reading of Mongolian,fixation location effects,a very well known phenomenon in the reading of alphabetic languages.Three experiments were conducted in present study.The first one examined whether word length(short-,medium-,long-target words)is the key to affect initial landing position during reading Mongolian.The second one measured whether word frequency(high-or low-frequency target words)affects the landing position effects in Mongolian words.And the third one examined whether word types(simple words,derived words)influence the decision of where to move the eyes next.Results as follows:(1)There is an fixation location effect during reading Mongolian.As word length increases,the initial viewing location of readers tend to locate his eyes from end of word toward beginning of that word.The probability of fixating a word increases with word length increases.And the frequency of making refixation on a word is minimized when the initial fixation is near the end of that word.(2)Initial landing position is nearer to the centre of words for high-frequency words than low-frequency words.And they also showdifferences emerge in later measures.When readers' initial fixation close to the beginning of high-frequency word,then the refixation will be targeted towards the end of the word.While readers' initial fixation close to the beginning of low-frequency word,then the refixation will be targeted towards words' centre,and the end of the word at the third time.(3)They exhibited a strong tendency to fixate at the slightly above of the word centre in single-fixation cases and at the word beginning in multiple-fixation cases for two types of Mongolian words.They do not differ in initial landing positions,but do differ in refixation behaviour.Readers tend to refixate on the end of derived word when their initial landing position targeted on the beginning of that word at first.While readers target their eyes at the centre of the simple word,when they fixate at the beginning of that word in the first fixation event.Conclusions as follows:(1)There is in an fixation location effect during reading Mongolian.(2)Word length as low-level oculomotor factor affects the fixation location effects in Mongolian reading.(3)Word frequency and word types are higher level linguistic factors.And word frequency has influences on the initial landing positions and refixation behaviour.While word types only make differences in the later measures.(4)The results indicate that low-level oculomotor factor as word length could explained by oculomotor model during reading Mongolian,and word frequency and word types as higher level linguistic factors support SWIFT model from cognitive model.