Task Effects On Eye Movements During Chinese Texts Reading

The task the reader has in mind during reading has an effect on how readerprocesses and comprehends text. How readers adjust their reading behavior accordingto task demands should be examined in order to better understand both skilled readingand the principles of eye movement control during reading. However， there is littleresearch has been conducted to examine how task influence eye movements duringnormal reading； current studies have examined how questions presented beforereading， a reading perspective， and reading instructions affect eye movementsduring reading. In addition， the existing researches about task effects almost takeWestern alphabetic writing as the research object， and not about Chinese. Chineseand alphabetic writing are two completely different letters. All the differencesbetween the two letters suggest that research findings on alphabetic writing can beapplied to the Chinese character has yet to be settled. In the present research， Iexamined how reading task influence eye movements and effect factors duringreading Chinese text， so that contribute to enrich the eye movements researches ofChinese.The study consisted of two experiments， take32undergraduates andgraduate students from Jiangxi normal university of normal or corrected-to-normalvision as subjects. In the experiment， I recorded and tracked subjects eyemovements of reading text by Hi-Speed high accuracy eye tracker produced by SMIof German.Experiment one takes two Chinese texts as materials in order to examined thetask effects in normal reading and the effect of word-factors （word frequency andstroke number） on task effects. Experiment two takes twelve Chinese texts asmaterials in order to examined how text factors （text types and difficulty）influencethe task effects in normal reading. Under the experimental conditions， theconclusions as follow:（1） In Chinese texts reading， the task effects real exist， in comparison to reading-for-comprehension instructions， proofreading instructions increased thenumber and duration of fixations and shortened the number of saccade and theaverage saccade amplitude.（2） The word frequency effect and stroke number effect were the same in bothreading-for-comprehension instructions and proofreading instructions；（3） The text type and difficulty were influence the task effects in bothreading-for-comprehension instructions and proofreading instructions， and theproofreaders also processed the meaning of words and texts；（4） In comparison to reading arguments and expositions， reading narrativesshortened the number and duration of fixations、 shortened the number of saccadeand increased the average saccade amplitude；（5） In the normal reading， the eye movements of readers were not affectedby low-level factors （word factors）， but also by high-level factors （text typesand difficulty）.