The Relationship Between Perception, Memory And Reading

What we do when we read would almost be the acme of a psychologist's achievement, for it would be to describe very many of the most intricate workings of the human mind (Solso, 2004). Reading speed and comprehension are the core of reading. Generally speaking, speed is related to the oculomotor and comprehension reflects the function of the central nervous system. They are two aspects of the reading process. There are many factors affecting reading comprehension, including the efficiency of information processing.An experiment is conducted to examine the influence of perception, memory on reading different languages. Twenty-three college students participated this experiment by measuring perceptual span, digit span, reading span and reading comprehension. Their performances of reading comprehension were measured and eye movements were monitored during reading. And their reading comprehension performance, reading time, words recognition and eye movements during reading were analyzed according to perceptual and memory spans.The result suggests: (1) the perceptual information processing of lower level has no obvious relationship with test comprehension. The information discrimination caused by acuity has no obvious effect on reading cognitive response. The pure acuity perceptual span tested in a non-word context has no enough power to predict visual movement actions. The right perceptual span showing visual attentive direction is more sensitive to the difficulty of information processing; (2) space-distributed digit span which has the function of predicting eye movements model reflects the quantity of information processing in a very short time. As a non-word signal processing, digit span has no effects on reading comprehension achievements. Short-term memory capacity facilitates the processing efficiency of the second language; (3) memory level has no enough power to predict the test comprehension level. The storing task in reading span only predict words recognition achievements; (4) language automobile processing has influence on reading comprehension. When to move eyes in reading mainly depends on cognitive factors, which supports the visual processing model.