Kyle Nelson and Dr. Steven Luke, Psychology
Due to the difficulty of finding valid and reliable testing material for our subjects to read, this current study has been significantly delayed. Finding reading passages that can be rated for difficulty for a non native speaker to read has been difficult and only in recent weeks have we found, through the generous help researchers in the linguistics department at BYU, materials that we finally feel can be used in such a study as the one we have proposed to carry out. Finally having reading passages that have been previously rated and used in research provides reliable passages with which to test our subjects and add to the validity of the study that we have proposed. Due to the fact that this study has not yet been completed we felt that a final report could not be written, however we will provide in the following paragraphs a description of our study and the proposed goals that we hope to accomplish very soon.
The topic of eye movement during second language reading is an area with a lack of research. Our proposed study would compare readers as they read in their own language and in a second language of Chinese or English, depending on the native language of the speaker. We hope to discover whether or not a second language learner will take on the characteristics of a native speaking reader when the individual reads in his second language. We plan to measure how second language skill influences eye movement when reading and how eye movement behaviors are controlled by visual and cognitive factors.
Our hypothesis is that as an individual increases in proficiency in their second language, that individual’s eye movement during reading will become similar to a native speaker’s eye movements when reading.
Research regarding eye movement while reading has focused on a native speaker reading words in his own native language, however, there is a lack of research regarding reading in a second language (Rayner, 2009). Our research will focus on this understudied area by researching eye movement of readers while they read in a second language. Our research will be beneficial in characterizing how individuals read in a second language, assessing language proficiency, and directing the development of language instruction methods.
Research regarding eye movement and language has focused on individuals reading their own native language (Rayner, 2009). These studies have typically compared English to Chinese speakers due to the difference in the writing system of these two languages. Among the differences found are duration of eye movement, perceptual span, and number of skipped words while reading to name a few (Chen & Tang, 1998; Inhoff & Liu, 1998; Rayner, Li, Juhasz, & Yan, 2005). It has been suggested that these differences are due to such factors as density of the test and the layout of letters or characters on a page (Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981).
Participants will be recruited from the student population on BYU campus. Native Chinese speakers will be found by visiting the ESL classes taught in the University Parkway Center. English speakers will be recruited from Chinese classes on campus in which returned missionaries are enrolled who served in Taiwan and learned Mandarin. We will match participants based on language proficiency tests and language history. We anticipate that 30, 60 in all, participants from in each group will be sufficient to gather the necessary data to draw conclusions on the research. However, we will attempt to record data from 30 different participants in each group, or 60 subjects in all.
We will use in our test, a pool of 40 short English and Chinese paragraphs that are similar in style and language difficulty. A selection of paragraphs in both languages will be presented to the subject to read as we track their eye movements using the Eyelink 1000plus eye-tracking machine. A control test using block shape letters that have no meaning will be administered. Reading block shaped letters has been shown to cause similar eye movements typical when the individual is reading in his native language (Luke, Henderson, 2013). The control test will help us to distinguish what eye movements are typical when the individual is reading in his own language and thus have greater confidence in our ability to distinguish second language characteristics from native language reading characteristics. During our tests, we will measure such variables as fixation duration, saccade amplitude (how far the eyes move), initial fixation location, refixation probability (how often a word is looked at more than once before moving on to another word), and other variables that will allow us to compare the subjects eye movements when reading in both English and Chinese.
We anticipate that the testing phase of our study will be completed sometime before April of 2015 and the analysis of the results will begin at that time. It is our hope that the results will validate our hypothesis. Once the data is analyzed and understood we will begin the process of submitting our written report for publication in professional research journals.
We wish to thank those who have donated funds that have made this research possible. We greatly appreciate your aid.
References
Chen, H., & Tang, C. (1998). The effective visual field in reading Chinese. Reading and Writing, 10, 245- 254.
Inhoff, A. W., & Liu, W. (1998). The perceptual span and oculomotor activity during the reading of Chinese sentences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 20 – 34.
Luke, S.G. & Henderson, J.M. (2013). Oculomotor and cognitive control of eye movements during reading: Evidence from mindless reading. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics, 75, 1230- 1245.
Pollatsek, A., Bolozky, S., Well, A. D., & Rayner, K. (1981). Asymmetries in the perceptual span for Israeli readers. Brain and Language, 14, 174– 180.
Rayner, K. (2009). Eye Movements And Attention In Reading, Scene Perception, And Visual Search. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(8), 1457-1506.
Rayner, K., Li, X., Juhasz, B. J., & Yan, G. (2005). The effect of word predictability on the eye movements of Chinese readers. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1089– 1093.