关键词: 注视位置效应, 偏向注视位置, 眼跳, 词间空格, 中文阅读

Abstract: It is well known that our eyes move to different locations in text reading to obtain the useful information for comprehension. The basic oculomotor events in reading are composed of successive fixations and saccades. However, all the eye-movement behavior in reading results from two types of decisions: when to move the eyes and where to move next (Rayner, 2009). A large number of studies has demonstrated that the “when” decision is largely driven by lexical properties of words. But there is typically no correlation between how long the eyes remain fixated and how far they move. Therefore, findings from when to move the eyes can not be directly extended to where to move next. The aim of this research is to review the advances in where to move the eyes, which is one of the basic issues of eye movement control in reading. Much evidence from researches on eye movement control in reading of alphabetic languages has suggested that the “where” decision is generally to be made on word based, selecting a word as the next saccade target The most cited finding for supporting word-based eye guidance in alphabetic languages is the observation of the “Preferred Viewing Location (PVL)” effect (Rayner, 1979). The PVL effect can be seen when one plots the distribution of initial landing positions in a word. The initial landing position is the location that the eyes initially fixate after making a first pass saccade into that word. Researchers found the eyes most often land at a position slightly to the left of the center of words, though it tends to be nearer the centre for short than long words. In contrast to the PVL, which represents where readers fixate in words, the optimal viewing position (OVP) represents the location in a word at which recognition time is minimized. A number of researchers have been endeavoring to explain the landing position effect by constructing different types of computational models of eye movement control during reading, for example the oculomotor models and cognitive models. In the present paper, the advances in landing position effect were reviewed during reading of different languages, mainly including 1) in the inter-word spaced alphabetic writing systems, whether this effect was influenced by word length, inter-word spacing, frequency and predictability, age and individual differences. It is clear that the “where” decision is largely driven by low-level cues such as word length and space information; 2) the effect in the other writing systems (like Thai and Japanese). On the basis of these studies mentioned above, the advances in reading of Chinese were further reviewed, including whether the effect existed or not during Chinese reading; whether it was influenced by word length and inter-word spaces; whether it was influenced by the size and structure of Chinese character; and also whether there were age and individual differences on landing positions during Chinese reading. Finally, future directions on this topic were discussed.

Key words: Landing position effect, Preferred viewing location, Saccades, Interword spacing, Chinese reading