Xia Ziqing, Chen Chun-Hsien, Kuo Jo-Yu, Zhang Mingmin
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore;
Department of Industrial Design, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608 City, Taiwan.
J Eye Mov Res. 2025 Mar 24;18(2):7. doi: 10.3390/jemr18020007. eCollection 2025 Apr.
Existing studies have revealed that the reading comprehension ability of readers can be adversely affected by their psychosocial stress. Yet, the detailed impact of stress on various stages of text processing is understudied. This study aims to explore how the higher-level text processing ability, including syntactic parsing, sentence integration, and global text processing, of first language (L1) and second language (L2) English readers is affected under stress situations. In addition, the roles of trait anxiety, the central executive function moderating stress effects, in text processing were also examined. Twenty-two L1 readers and twenty-one L2 readers were asked to perform reading comprehension tasks under different stress situations. Eye-tracking technology was adopted to record participants' visual behaviors while reading, and ten eye-movement measurements were computed to represent the effect of different types of text processing. The results demonstrate that the stress reduced the efficiency of syntactic parsing and sentence integration in both L1 and L2 groups, but only impaired global text processing in L2 readers. Specifically, L2 readers focused more on the topic structure of text to facilitate comprehension under stress situations. Moreover, only L1 readers' higher-level text processing was affected by trait anxiety, while L2 readers' processing was mainly related to their reading proficiency level. Future studies and applications were discussed. The findings advance our understanding of stress effects on different stages of higher-level text processing. They also have practical implications for developing interventions to help language learners suffering from stress disorders.
现有研究表明，读者的阅读理解能力会受到其心理社会压力的不利影响。然而，压力对文本处理各个阶段的具体影响尚未得到充分研究。本研究旨在探讨在压力情境下，第一语言（L1）和第二语言（L2）为英语的读者的高级文本处理能力，包括句法解析、句子整合和整体文本处理，是如何受到影响的。此外，还考察了特质焦虑，即调节压力效应的中央执行功能，在文本处理中的作用。22名L1读者和21名L2读者被要求在不同的压力情境下完成阅读理解任务。采用眼动追踪技术记录参与者阅读时的视觉行为，并计算10项眼动指标来反映不同类型文本处理的效果。结果表明，压力降低了L1组和L2组的句法解析和句子整合效率，但仅损害了L2读者的整体文本处理能力。具体而言，L2读者在压力情境下更关注文本的主题结构以促进理解。此外，只有L1读者的高级文本处理受到特质焦虑的影响，而L2读者的处理主要与其阅读熟练程度有关。文中讨论了未来的研究和应用。这些发现增进了我们对压力对高级文本处理不同阶段影响的理解。它们对于开发干预措施以帮助患有压力障碍的语言学习者也具有实际意义。
