Effects Of Ageing And Word Length On Chinese Reading:Evidence From Eye Movements

Effects of word length on eye guidance during reading for alphabetic languages are preserved in older age.Studies also found word length effect of Chinese reading,however,word length effects for older readers of Chinese are unknown.Accordingly,we examined adult age differences in eye movements for short(2-characters)and long(4-character)words during Chinese reading.In experiment,26 Chinese young and 26 older readers read 64 sentences naturally and tracked their eye movements.We use lme4 package in R to analyze the date.We mainly conducted three analyses in present study.First,word length effect on young and old adults in Chinese reading.We use the word length and age as independent variables to explore aging and word length effects in Chinese reading by analyzing eye movement measures in different controls.The results showed that:(1)There exists a stable word length effect in Chinese reading,long words with less skip,longer fixation time,more fixations and re fixations;(2)Significant aging effect showed that Chinese old adults suffer more reading difficulties and read more carefully than young adults by reading more slowly,making longer fixations,making more fixations,skipping words infrequently,making shorter forward eye movements;(3)Word length effect for old adults are greater than that for young adults.Second,the analysis of saccade targeting for Chinese old adults in Chinese reading.Using PVL curve to examined the first fixation,refixation and third fixation locations.Results showed that:(1)When only had single fixation on the target words,all readers preferred to fixate the center of the short words,but only young adults preferred to fixate the center of the long words;When had more than one fixations,both young and old adults first fixated the beginning of short and long words;(2)However,young adults refixate the end of both short and long words,older refixate the short words' end and long words' beginning;(3)Old adults' third fixations tend to land in the end of long words,while young adults rarely has third fixation.(4)The Chinese elderly readers tend to adopt to the character-based sequence processing pattern.Third,the factors of effects on Chinese reading for old adults.This study took visual acuity and digit span memory into the model to investigate the change.The results showed that:(1)The acuity has strong correlation with aging effect and digit span memory influences overall eye measures.(2)Aging and language characteristic are the important factors to generate Chinese reading aging effect.In conclusion,the present study suggesting that:(1)There is a typical word length effect and aging effect in Chinese reading,and old readers have a greater word length effect that old adults suffer more difficulties in processing long words.(2)Chinese elderly readers adopt a more careful reading strategy,and character-based sequence processing pattern(3)The lower acuity for old adults and Chinese characteristic are factors leaded to the reading pattern for Chinese old adults.