Eye-Movement Study On Chinese Character Recognition In The Foreign Students Of The Central Asia

Researches on Chinese character recognition can much better explore humaninternal cognitive processing course and mechanism, and nowadays it has alreadybecome an important field of cognitive psychology, especially of the languagecognition. Using eye-movement technology, this author mainly investigates theeye-movement mode and cognitive processing course of Chinese characterrecognition in different levels of foreign students from the Central Asia byconducting three experiments, and offers scientific basis for Chinese teaching for theforeigners.The first experiment studies the influence of grapheme and phoneme inChinese character recognition in the starting condition. Using four different startingtypes of Chinese characters as materials, the author studies that the Chinesecharacters grapheme and phoneme play the role in different Chinese level of foreignstudents from the Central Asia in Chinese character recognition. The results haveshowed that phoneme starting mode influences the low-level foreign studentsprominently, while grapheme starting mode influences the high-level foreignstudents prominently; besides, the gaze duration and the total processing duration ofthe low-level foreign students last longer than those of the high-level foreignstudents.The second and the third experiments separately study the influence of Chinesecharacters’ structure pattern, frequency, viewing position and the foreign students’Chinese level have the effect on Chinese character recognition on condition thatindividual character presents and sentence processing presents. Using the differentfrequency and structure types of Chinese characters as materials, adopting differentpresenting way (single or sentence processing), the author studies if Chinesecharacters structure, frequency or position effects the foreign students of the CentralAsia in the grapheme characteristic processing, and if the Chinese character structureand frequency have the same effect on the Chinese character recognition under thedifferent presenting ways. The results have showed that the Chinese characterrecognition of the high-level foreign students is better than the low-level foreignstudents in the condition of single，and when recognizing Chinese characters ofdifferent structures，different Chinese level of foreign students have the preferencefor centre watching, but the ideal eye-movement mode of best watching point doesn’texist；Chinese characters’ structure and frequency influence the Chinese character recognition of foreign students under two conditions prominently, the students’ totalfixation duration and regression-path duration on the about-structure Chinesecharacters last shorter than the other two structures, but the other eye-movementindex doesn’t have the identical characteristics, the students’ recognition about thehigh-frequency Chinese characters is better than the low-frequency Chinesecharacters.The author synthesizes the above experiment results, and draws the followingconclusions: First, Chinese level influences Chinese character cognitive course offoreign students of the Central Asia；different Chinese level of foreign students fromthe Central Asia show different characteristics in Chinese character cognitive course.The phoneme plays a main role in the low-level foreign students, while the graphemeplays a main role in the high-level foreign students. Second, those students’ semanticunderstanding ways in Chinese character recognition conform to the double channeltheory. Third, when recognizing Chinese characters of different structures，differentChinese level of foreign students from the Central Asia have the preference for centrewatching, but the ideal eye-movement mode of best watching point and positioneffect doesn’t exist. Four, Chinese characters’ structure and frequency influenceChinese character recognition of foreign students of the Central Asia in the conditionof single and sentence processing, the frequency effect exists, but structure effectdoesn’t exist.