Eye Movement Behavior Research In The Chinese Reading:Word Frequency Effect Of Different Reading Tasks

In order to discuss the characteristics of eye movement behaviors and word frequency effect under different reading tasks in Chinese.Research uses the methods of searching reading and scanning reading in alphabetic writing.Research selects Chinese as investigation object and investigates the characteristics of eye movement behaviors on reading,searching and scanning.Research investigates word frequency effect of searching reading and scanning reading,then investigates the impacts of different reading tasks on the depth of lexical information processing by using.Study consists of two parts:Experiment 1 compares searching reading with reading comprehension tasks.Participants are required to read sentences in reading comprehension tasks and answer the questions according to the content of the sentences(a question will come after twenty percent of the sentences appear).Participants are required to read sentences in searching reading and judge if there is a key word “zebra”.Sentences in the experiment implant high-frequency words or low-frequency words.The results show searching take participants more time to watch the target word and have lower saccade.Word frequency effect exists in searching reading and reading comprehension.Experiment 2 compares scanning reading with reading comprehension.Requirement of reading comprehension is same as Experiment 1.Participants are required to have a quick look at the sentences and judge if the sentences are related to costumes.Materials of the experiment are same as Experiment 1.The results show first fixation and gaze duration of target word is longer in reading comprehension.Word frequency effect exists in scanning reading and reading comprehension.But significance level of word frequency effect in reading comprehension is higher.The following main results are:(1)The characteristics of eye movement behaviors have different characteristics in different tasks in Chinese.(2)The main factor which effects on eye movement behaviors in the process of reading is high-level cognitive processing rather than the non-lexical level information which readers obtain in the early stage of watching and the factor of low-level eye movement nerve.It conforms to eye movement theory model which was brought up by Morrison.(3)Different reading tasks demand to effect and regulate the processing depth of lexical information.(4)Word frequency effect exists in searching reading and the phenomenon of semantic access happens automatically in searching reading.Word frequency effect exists in searching.But significance level of word frequency effect is lower than reading comprehension.Word frequency effect is more significant in reading which require more attention and more seriously.