Su Juan, Yin Guoen, Bai Xuejun, Yan Guoli, Kurtev Stoyan, Warrington Kayleigh L, McGowan Victoria A, Liversedge Simon P, Paterson Kevin B
Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
College of Statistics and Mathematics, Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 May;82(4):1566-1572. doi: 10.3758/s13414-019-01960-9.
Readers can acquire useful information from only a narrow region of text around each fixation (the perceptual span), which extends asymmetrically in the direction of reading. Studies with bilingual readers have additionally shown that this asymmetry reverses with changes in horizontal reading direction. However, little is known about the perceptual span's flexibility following orthogonal (vertical vs. horizontal) changes in reading direction, because of the scarcity of vertical writing systems and because changes in reading direction often are confounded with text orientation. Accordingly, we assessed effects in a language (Mongolian) that avoids this confound, in which text is conventionally read vertically but can also be read horizontally. Sentences were presented normally or in a gaze-contingent paradigm in which a restricted region of text was displayed normally around each fixation and other text was degraded. The perceptual span effects on reading rates were similar in both reading directions. These findings therefore provide a unique (nonconfounded) demonstration of perceptual span flexibility.
读者只能从每次注视点周围狭窄的文本区域（感知跨度）获取有用信息，该区域在阅读方向上呈不对称延伸。针对双语读者的研究还表明，这种不对称会随着水平阅读方向的改变而逆转。然而，由于垂直书写系统稀缺，且阅读方向的改变常常与文本方向混淆，因此对于阅读方向发生正交（垂直与水平）变化后感知跨度的灵活性，我们知之甚少。因此，我们在一种避免这种混淆的语言（蒙古语）中进行了评估，在蒙古语中，文本通常是垂直阅读，但也可以水平阅读。句子以正常方式呈现，或以注视点相关范式呈现，即每次注视点周围正常显示一个受限文本区域，其他文本则进行降质处理。在两种阅读方向上，感知跨度对阅读速度的影响相似。因此，这些发现提供了感知跨度灵活性的独特（无混淆）证明。
