Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2024 Jun 3;9(1):34. doi: 10.1186/s41235-024-00559-5.
People regularly read multi-line texts in different formats and publishers, internationally, must decide how to present text to make reading most effective and efficient. Relatively few studies have examined multi-line reading, and fewer still Chinese multi-line reading. Here, we examined whether texts presented in single or double columns, and either left-justified or fully-justified affect Chinese reading. Text format had minimal influence on overall reading time; however, it significantly impacted return-sweeps (large saccades moving the eyes from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next). Return-sweeps were launched and landed further away from margins and involved more corrective saccades in single- than double-column format. For left- compared to fully-justified format, return-sweeps were launched and landed closer to margins. More corrective saccades also occurred. Our results showed more efficient return-sweep behavior for fully- than left-justified text. Moreover, there were clear trade-off effects such that formats requiring increased numbers of shorter return-sweeps produced more accurate targeting and reduced numbers of corrective fixations, whereas formats requiring reduced numbers of longer return-sweeps caused less accurate targeting and an increased rate of corrective fixations. Overall, our results demonstrate that text formats substantially affect return-sweep eye movement behavior during Chinese reading without affecting efficiency and effectiveness, that is, the overall time it takes to read and understand the text.
人们经常阅读不同格式的多行文本，国际上的出版商必须决定如何呈现文本，以实现阅读的最佳效果和效率。相对较少的研究检查了多行阅读，更少的研究涉及中文多行阅读。在这里，我们研究了单栏或双栏、左对齐或全对齐的文本呈现方式是否会影响中文阅读。文本格式对整体阅读时间的影响很小；然而，它显著影响回扫（从一行文本的末尾到大眼动到下一行文本的开始的大扫视）。在单栏格式中，回扫的启动和着陆距离边缘更远，涉及更多的校正扫视。与全对齐格式相比，左对齐格式的回扫启动和着陆更靠近边缘。也发生了更多的校正扫视。我们的结果表明，全对齐文本的回扫行为比左对齐文本更有效率。此外，存在明显的权衡效应，即需要增加短回扫次数的格式会产生更准确的定位和减少校正注视次数，而需要减少长回扫次数的格式会导致定位不准确和校正注视次数增加。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，文本格式极大地影响了中文阅读过程中的回扫眼动行为，而不会影响阅读的效率和效果，即阅读和理解文本所需的总时间。
