Eye movement guidance in Chinese reading: Is there a preferred viewing location?

In this study, we examined eye movement guidance in Chinese reading. We embedded either a 2-character word or a 4-character word in the same sentence frame, and observed the eye movements of Chinese readers when they read these sentences. We found that when all saccades into the target words were considered that readers eyes tended to land near the beginning of the word. However, we also found that Chinese readers’ eyes landed at the center of words when they made only a single fixation on a word, and that they landed at the beginning of a word when they made more than one fixation on a word. However, simulations that we carried out suggest that these findings cannot be taken to unambiguously argue for word-based saccade targeting in Chinese reading. We discuss alternative accounts of eye guidance in Chinese reading and suggest that eye movement target planning for Chinese readers might involve a combination of character-based and word-based targeting contingent on word segmentation processes.

► This paper deals with how Chinese readers decide where to look next in reading. ► It notes that target selection could be based on (1) word-based targeting, (2) character-based targeting, or (3) a constant distance strategy. ► An experiment is reported and a number of simulations are provided. ► It is argued that a constant distance strategy cannot account for the data and that eye movement control is a combination of word and character-based strategies.