汉字笔画数对注视位置效应的影响

The Number of Strokes Influences Initial Landing Positions during Chinese Reading

采用EyeLink 2000眼动仪，选取四种类型的双字词（首字和尾字均为多笔画汉字；首字为多笔画汉字，尾字为少笔画汉字；首字为少笔画汉字，尾字为多笔画汉字；首字和尾字均为少笔画汉字），探讨汉字笔画数对注视位置效应的影响。结果发现，单次注视条件下首次注视往往定位于词的中心位置，多次注视时首次注视往往落在词的开头部分；当首字为多笔画汉字时，相较于少笔画汉字，读者的首次注视更多地落在词的首字上。首字和尾字笔画数共同影响读者的再注视概率。上述研究结果支持“战略一战术”模型。

For alphabetic language scripts, the decision about where to move the eyes during reading is strongly influenced by low - lev-el visual variables such as word length, which is provided by spacing information. In contrast, high -level linguistic variables, such asword frequency and word predictability do not have an influence on where readers move their eyes （Rayner, 2009）. Similar to the al-phabetic writing systems, there has been evidence that word frequency and word predictability do not influence initial landing positionsduring Chinese reading （Guo, 2012; Wu et al. , 2011 ）. However, written Chinese is a kind of ideographic writing system, which dif-fers from alphabetic writing systems in many dimensions. Chinese uses a non - alphabetic, character - based script with square - shapedforms of different levels of visual complexity （i. e., roughly the number of strokes） as basic writing units. Yang and McConkie （1999）obtained a flat preferred viewing location curve, and concluded that in Chinese reading, unlike other languages, saccadic target selec-tion is not word -based. Their results also showed that the number of strokes did not influence participants＇ initial landing positions.However, we think that, in their sludy, the width of the space between adjacent characters is equivalent to half the width of a Chinesecharacter, which maybe influences the results. Many studies have found that the number of strokes of characters influences the process-ing of vocabulary recognition, therefore suggesting that readers tended to fixate characters with high complexity. In the current study, 48 sentences including two - character target words were adopted to examine whether the number of strokesinfluenced landing positions. The number of strokes of the first and the second constituent characters of target words were manipulated.The target words never occurred at the beginning or the end of the sentences. A11 experimental sentences were 17 to 27 characters inlength （M = 19.84 characters）. The sentences were rated on a 7 - point scale for their naturalness by 20 participants who did not takepart in the eye - tracking study. The mean naturalness score was 5.97 （ where a score of 7 was very natural）. 60 participants wereasked to read the experimental sentences which included target words, and their eye movements were monitored as they read texts. Theparticipants＇ eye movements were recorded with an SR Research EyeLink 2000 eye tracker that monitored the position of the right eye ev-ery 1 ms. The stimuli were presented on a 19 - inch ViewSonic monitor with a 1,024- 768 pixel resolution. Each participant was testedindividually. They were required to read the sentences and understand them to the best of their ability. When they completed reading asentence, they pushed a button box to terminate the display. They were instructed that occasionally a comprehension question would ap-pear after a sentence and that they should try hard to answer the question correctly. We found that eye movement behaviors were different in different fixation cases. When there was only one fixation on a target word,the first fixations mostly landed on lhe centre of the word. Therefore, we found a preferred viewing location in single - fixation cases dur-ing Chinese reading. While there were multiple fixations on a target word, readers first fixated at the beginning of the target word. Inthose multiple fixation cases, if the first fixation landed at the beginning of a target word, the probability of refixating of this word wasthe highest. Importantly, we found that when the number of first character＇s strokes is high, readers mostly fixated at the first character.In addition, the numbers of strokes of the first and second characters both influence the probability of refixation. We argued that Chinesechildren use the ＂strategy -tactics＂ approach during reading.