Abstract
In Experiment 1, duration of eye fixations, saccade magnitude, saccade velocity, and regressive eye movements were measured during alphabet-like kana- (both katakana and hirakana) and logographic kanji-based Japanese text reading. The results suggest that katakana reading required longer fixation durations (about 240 msec) with small saccade magnitude (about 3, which corresponds to 3.5 letters), whereas kanji-based reading required shorter fixation durations (about 170 msec) with larger saccade magnitude (about 5°, which corresponds to 6 letters). Eye movement characteristics of hirakana-based text fell in between. The frequency of the regressive eye movements was found to be significantly large for katakana text. In Experiment 2, interlanguage (English-Japanese) comparison was made with changing difficulty levels. The results showed that, for texts of the same difficulty, English required longer fixation durations from Japanese students than did Japanese texts, but no significant difference was found between difficulty levels. These results strongly suggest that the text processing for phonogram-based kana components and ideogram-based kanji components was different in terms of reading strategies, and that longer fixation durations were needed by Japanese students for reading English as compared with Japanese texts.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Jonides, J., & Gleitman, H. (1972). A conceptual category effect in visual search: O as letter or as digit. Perception & Psychophysics, 12, 457–460.
Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1987). The psychology of reading and language comprehension. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Kambe, N. (1989). The span of the effective visual field during a fixation in reading eye movement. Research Reports of the National Japanese Language Institute, 10, 59–80. (In Japanese, with English summary)
McConkie, G. W., & Zola, D. (1987). Visual attention during eye fixations while reading. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 385–401). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
O’Regan, J. K. (1980). The control of saccade size and fixation duration in reading: The limits of linguistic control. Perception & Psychophysics, 28, 112–117.
Osaka, N. (1987a). Effect of peripheral visual field size upon eye movements during Japanese text processing. In J. K. O’Regan & A. Levy-Schoen (Eds.), Eye movements: From physiology to cognition (pp. 421-429). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Osaka, N. (1987b). Variation of saccadic suppression with target eccentricity. Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics, 7, 499–501.
Rayner, K., & McConkie, G. W. (1976). What guides a reader’s eye movements? Vision Research, 16, 829–837.
Rayner, K. J., & Pollatsek, A. (1987). Eye movements in reading: A tutorial review. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 327-362). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 62410003 and No. 6351(055) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Osaka, N. Eye fixation and saccade during kana and kanji text reading: Comparison of English and Japanese text processing. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 27, 548–550 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334665
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334665