Abstract: It is well known that Chinese texts consist of characters which take the same amount of horizontal extent, and there are no explicit boundaries between the words. Yang and McConkie (2004) proposed that Chinese readers developed oculomotor strategies that did not involve words. However, words were most important for alphabetic scripts reading (O’Regan & Jacobs, 1992). And recently a number of researches have confirmed that vocabulary is basic element in the information processing of Chinese reading and there were preferred viewing location effect and optimal fixation position effect on Chinese word (Bai, et. al., 2008; Shen, et. al., 2010; Rayner, et. al., 2007; Yan, et. al., 2010). It is apparent that both word and character were the unit for saccade targeting. But scholars at home and abroad have never investigated which one was the primal important in saccade targeting. So this study examined the influence of characters’ font size and word procession on saccade targeting and fixation duration. The research used nested within subjects design by 4 (presentation: small- small, small-large, large-small, large-large) × 2 (text content: sentence & a serial of ※). 40 framework sentences and 40“※”strings were sequentially divided into four groups, and then 4 presentation ways were arranged according to the Latin square type. “※”strings and sentences controlled were equal in amount. Participants were asked to read sentences as normal, and skim through the “※” strings from right to left as normal reading. The results show that: (1) the pattern of eye movement when they read text was similar to those when they scan the “※” string which shared same presentation mode as the sentences; (2) The sentence of the vary in size of characters on its both sides had seriously affected the readers’ reading efficiency; (3) The probability of refixation on the larger characters appeared was greater than the smaller characters, and which was reverse for the index of skip probability. Anyhow, the results showed that both the vision presentation ways and the difficulty of lexical processing had affected participants’ eye movement, and that characters were also the basic unit for saccade targeting.

Key words: Chinese reading, presentation, eye movements, cognitive control models

摘要： 研究采用4（呈现方式：小－小、小－大、大－小、大－大）×2（文本内容：句子、“※”串）的被试内设计，考察了文本字符呈现大小对读者眼跳选择目标和注视持续时间的影响。结果发现：（1）读者在浏览不同呈现方式的“※”串时的眼动模式基本上与阅读相应呈现方式的句子类似；（2）句子完全是由双字词构成，词内的首字和尾字大小不等（‘小－大”和“大－小”呈现条件）严重影响阅读效率；（3）读者在阅读句子时的注视时间高于浏览“※”串时的注视时间。结果说明，视觉呈现方式和词汇加工均影响读者的眼动模式。

关键词: 汉语阅读, 字号呈现, 眼动, 认知控制模型