title: Character-complexity effects in Chinese reading and visual search: A comparison and theoretical implications.
abstract: Three eye-movement experiments were conducted to examine how the complexity of characters in Chinese words (i.e., number of strokes per character) influences their processing and eye-movement behaviour. In Experiment 1, English speakers with no significant knowledge of Chinese searched for specific low-, medium-, and high-complexity target characters in a multi-page narrative containing characters of varying complexity (3-16 strokes). Fixation durations and skipping rates were influenced by the visual complexity of both the target characters and the characters being searched even though participants had no knowledge of Chinese. In Experiment 2, native Chinese speakers performed the same character-search task, and a similar pattern of results was observed. Finally, in Experiment 3, a second sample of native Chinese speakers read the same text used in Experiments 1 and 2, with text characters again exhibiting complexity effects. These results collectively suggest that character-complexity effects on eye movements may not be due to lexical processing per se but may instead reflect whatever visual processing is required to know whether or not a character corresponds to an episodically represented target. The theoretical implications of this for our understanding of normal reading are discussed.
authors.affiliation: a School of Psychology , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK.
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: b School of Educational Science , Ludong University , Yantai , China.
authors.forename: Qiaoming
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: a School of Psychology , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK.
authors.forename: Caspian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Priest
authors.affiliation: a School of Psychology , University of Southampton , Southampton , UK.
authors.forename: Erik D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Reichle
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychology, Social Sciences , University at Albany , SUNY, Albany , NY , USA.
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sheridan
keywords: Character complexity effects; English speakers; Native Chinese speakers; Reading; Visual search