Eye movement control in reading unspaced text: the case of the Japanese script

The present study examines the landing-site distributions of the eyes during natural reading of Japanese script: a script that mixes three different writing systems (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) and that misses regular spacing between words. The results show a clear preference of the eyes to land...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) Vol. 41; no. 19; pp. 2503 - 2510
Main Authors: Kajii, Natsumi, Nazir, Tatjana A., Osaka, Naoyuki
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2001
Elsevier Science
Elsevier
Subjects:
Analysis of Variance
Biological and medical sciences
Cognitive science
Computer science
Cues
Eye movement control
Fixation, Ocular - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Japan
Japanese script
Language
Neuroscience
Production and perception of written language
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Saccades - physiology
Space Perception - physiology
Unspaced text
Japan
Eye movement control
Japanese script
Unspaced text
Human
Reading
Language
Vision
Cognition
Spacing
Verbal perception
Motor control
Japanese
Eye movement
ISSN:0042-6989, 1878-5646, 0042-6989
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The present study examines the landing-site distributions of the eyes during natural reading of Japanese script: a script that mixes three different writing systems (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) and that misses regular spacing between words. The results show a clear preference of the eyes to land at the beginning rather than the center of the word. In addition, it was found that the eyes land on Kanji characters more frequently than on Hiragana or Katakana characters. Further analysis for two- and three-character words indicated that the eye's landing-site distribution differs depending on type of the characters in the word: the eyes prefer to land at the word beginning only when the initial character of the word is a Kanji character. For pure Hiragana words, the proportion of initial fixations did not differ between character positions. Thus, as already indicated by Kambe (National Institute of Japanese Language Report 85 (1986) 29), the visual distinctiveness of the three Japanese scripts plays a role in guiding eye movements in reading Japanese.
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ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
0042-6989
DOI:10.1016/S0042-6989(01)00132-8