阅读水平调节儿童阅读眼动注视模式的发展:基于9～11岁儿童的证据

按照3~5年级小学生的语文阅读水平,在各年级中分别选取年龄相同的高、中、低三组儿童作为被试,要求他们阅读适合本年级阅读水平的5篇短文,探讨同一年龄段内读者阅读水平的高低对阅读眼动注视模式的影响是否存在发展上的差异。通过记录其眼动轨迹,结果发现:9岁儿童的阅读眼动注视模式受读者本身阅读水平的影响最大,10岁次之,到11岁,随着儿童基本眼动行为的成熟,这种影响随之消失。表明读者阅读眼动注视模式的发展动力来源于语言操作技能和眼球运动协调性提高的交互作用。

The modulation of reading level on the development of children's eye movement characteristics: Evidence from 9-to 11-year-old children

Previous studies have shown that the basic characteristics of children's eye movements during reading undergo substantial changes in early years,becoming adult-like around the age of 11:as chronological age increases,sentence reading times and fixation durations decrease,saccade amplitudes increase,fewer fixations and regressions are made,refixation probability decreases and word skipping probability increases.Then,a basic question is what accounts for the aforementioned changes with respect to the development of children's eye movements characteristics.There are at least two possible answers:the first is "linguistic proficiency hypothesis"-that the development of reading skill in turn causes the observed changes in eye-movement behavior;the second is "oculomotor tuning hypothesis"-that readers are able to "tune" their oculomotor control system through learning so that the eye movements themselves become more optimal during reading.The present study wished to examine which hypothesis is more convincing;specifically we examined whether there were any developmental treads in terms of the influence of reading level on children's basic eye movement characteristics.We tested amount of children's reading level (approximately 200 children) in each grade.Based on their test scores,we selected three groups of children in each grade:the top 15 children were encoded as high-reading level group;the medium 15 children were encoded as medium-reading level group;the last 6-20 children were encoded as low-reading level group.Then,we instructed participants to read five age-appropriate texts when their eye movements were recorded.The results showed that,high-level groups of 9-year-old children in 3ra grade made significantly longer saccade amplitude,more forward saccades,and higher reading speed than the medium,and low groups of children,and no significant differences were found between the latter two groups of children for all the eye movement measures we adopted;for 10-year-old children in the 4th grade,high-level groups of participants made significantly less forward saccades and higher reading speed than those in low-group of participants,and no significant differences were found between the high-and medium-level groups of children;for 11-year-old children in the 5th grade,there were no reliable differences across three groups of children on all the eye movements measures.Based on the two hypothesis in terms of how children's eye movements develop during reading,we argue that both linguistic proficiency and oculomotor tuning cause the development of children's eye movement's characteristics.