Foveal Load Effect On Saccadic Targeting In Chinese Reading

Landing position directly affects the reading efficiency.In alphabetic languages readers choose the center of the word as the saccadic target,which is the optimal viewing position.Because of oculomotor error,their saccades often miss,readers fixate at a location slightly left of word center,that is,the preferred viewing location.The spaces between words are one kind of cue for visual word segmentation that guides the reader selecting saccadic target.However,there is no explicit word boundary information in Chinese reading.So the strategy of Chinese readers is different from alphabetic languages readers.The properties of fixated words and parafoveal processing affect the subsequent saccadic target selection.Dynamic-adjustment hypothesis holds that the load of fixated word processing modulates the processing of parafoveal words,where readers then adjust the selection of the next saccade target.Processing-based strategy holds that the load of foveal has direct influence on the selection of saccade target.On the basic of previous research,the present study aimed to explore two questions:(1)How does foveal processing affect saccade target selection.(2)whether the information on morpheme could exert influences on the processing of foveal.In experiment 1,the frequency of fixated words in foveal processing and the strokes of parafoveal words were manipulated to explore how foveal processing affect saccade target selection.40 participants were asked to read the experimental sentences which included target words.The results showed that the saccade length of high-frequency words was longer than that of low-frequency wordsithe upcoming saccade length of parafoveal vision was significantly longer for words with a low number of strokes than a high number of strokes.We failed to observe significant interactions between these two factors for any eye movement measures used in the study.This result shows that the processing of foveal has an independent influence on the selection of saccade target.In experiment 2,we investigated whether character processing affects the saccade target selection in Chinese reading.In Experiment 2a,we manipulate the critical region word was either high or low frequency,of which the frequency of the initial character of the word was either high or low.52 participants were asked to read the experimental sentences which included target words.We observe significant word frequency effect and interactions between these two factors in the fixation time.Participants fixated on low-frequency words for a significantly longer time than for high-frequency words;When target words were low frequency,the fixation time was longer on words with low frequency initial character than on words with high frequency initial character.In saccade target selection,we only observe significant word frequency effect,the length of saccade was longer on words with high frequency than on words with low frequency.In Experiment 2b,we manipulate the critical region word was either high or low frequency,of which the frequency of the second character of the word was either high or low.The properties of words in a fixated region not only affect the fixation time but the saccade targets selection.The incoming and outgoing saccade lengths were longer on words with high frequency than on words with low frequency.The frequency of second character affects the saccade target selection.When target words were low frequency,the incoming saccade lengths were shorter on words with hiah frequency,while,the length of outgoing saccade were longer on words with high frequency second character.These findings suggest that the processing of second characters not only affect fixation time,but the selection of saccade target.Based on the findings of the two studies,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The frequency of fixated word and the number of strokes of parafoveal words independently affects the selection of saccadic targeting in Chinese reading.(2)Different from the initial morpheme,the processing load of the second morpheme did influence saccade leneth.