Description
The unique phenomenon of preferred viewing location (PVL) of an initial saccade in a word has been extensively studied in alphabetic reading with eye-tracking techniques. However, pertinent evidence of PVL in non-alphabetic reading remains limited and inconclusive. This article investigates PVL by leveraging eye-movement data from natural Chinese reading in two contrastive reading scenarios of individual and coherent sentences. The main findings manifest that Chinese readers share a left-of-center PVL as observed in alphabetic reading, while also revealing impact of reading scenario and sub(lexical) properties (e.g., word length, stroke counts, and frequencies) and other eye-movement metrics (e.g., saccade length, first fixation durations, and refixation probability). Notebly, more pronounced leftward PVLs were observed for words featured by greater length, lower frequency or higher stroke counts in isolated sentence reading compared to passage reading. Diverging from random saccade selections in Chinese reading, these observations lend robust support for Chinese readers employing flexible strategy for saccade targeting selections modulated by both linguistic and oculomotor metrics, which deepens our understanding of cognitive processes in non-alphabetic reading comprehension.Keywords: Preferred viewing location, saccade targeting selection, sentence vs. passage reading, natural Chinese reading
| Period | 6 Dec 2025 → 7 Dec 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | CogSci Asia-Pacific Meetup Kickoff: International Conference on Cognitive Science 2025 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Tokyo, JapanShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |