Miao Hsuan Yen

Eye movements and parafoveal word processing in reading Chinese

In two experiments, a parafoveal lexicality effect in the reading of Chinese (a script that does not physically mark word boundaries) was examined. Both experiments used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) and indicated that the lexical properties of parafoveal words influenced eye movements. In Experiment 1, the preview stimulus was either a real word or a pseudoword. Targets with word previews, even unrelated ones, were more likely to be skipped than were those with pseudowords. In Experiment 2, all of the preview stimuli had the same first character as the target. Target words with same-morpheme previews were fixated for less time than were those with pseudoword previews, suggesting that morphological processing may be involved in extracting information from parafoveal words in Chinese reading. Together, the two experiments dealing with how words are processed in Chinese may provide some constraints on current computational models of reading.

Early parafoveal processing in reading Chinese sentences

The possibility that during Chinese reading information is extracted at the beginning of the current fixation was examined in this study. Twenty-four participants read for comprehension while their eye movements were being recorded. A pretarget-target two-character word pair was embedded in each sentence and target word visibility was manipulated in two time intervals (initial 140 ms or after 140 ms) during pretarget viewing. Substantial beginning- and end-of-fixation preview effects were observed together with beginning-of-fixation effects on the pretarget. Apparently parafoveal information at least at the character level can be extracted relatively early during ongoing fixations. Results are highly relevant for ongoing debates on spatially distributed linguistic processing and address fundamental questions about how the human mind solves the task of reading within the constraints of different writing systems.

Methodology and Application of Eye-Tracking Techniques in Science Education

Eye-tracking techniques have the potential to reveal learning processes and problem solving strategies when dealing with science content. For instance, locations, durations, and numbers of gazes in predefined areas of interest together with transitions between areas indicate the degree of attention allocation to these areas. These measures combined with achievement tests, thinking aloud, or interviews can shed light on how or why learners gain or do not gain knowledge. This chapter aims to introduce issues in science education that can be explored with eye-tracking techniques and methodological concerns that should be considered when conducting research and interpreting data. The first section of this chapter outlines the methodological issues and the second section presents a survey of empirical studies conducted in Taiwan. Specifically, since material with science content usually consists of multiple representations, attentional distribution in text and illustration is one of the research foci. Furthermore, how participants’ prior knowledge and additional cues in the material guide attention allocation is also investigated. Implications for future development are discussed in the last section.

Trends in Science Education Research in Taiwan: A Content Analysis of the Chinese Journal of Science Education from 1993 to 2012

This chapter describes a content analysis that served three purposes. First, it investigated science education research trends in Taiwan as represented by publications from 1993 to 2012 in the Chinese Journal of Science Education (CJSE), an official journal of the Chinese Association for Science Education in Taiwan. This was done by breaking down the 20-year interval into four periods. Second, the results were compared with those in international journals. Finally, we analyzed trends in authorship as well as in the tendency to publish in CJSE compared to the international journals. We analyzed 394 articles published in the first 20 years of CJSE (1993–2012). The results showed that CJSE published a very high percentage of empirical studies (96 %) over the past 20 years. The most common research area involved learning (26.4 %), including 15.0 % of concept learning and 11.4 % of process skills, followed by teacher education (12.9 %), and teaching strategies (12.9 %) . Studies investigating goals, policy, curriculum (2.3%), informal learning (1.8%) or textbook and text analysis (1/0%) were equality absent. In addition, CJSE published several relatively balanced quantitative and qualitative studies. Twenty-six percent of the articles were pure quantitative data while 22.6% were qualitative reports. Moreover, there was a high percentage (25.3%) of articles, which include both quantitative and qualitative data. We also found that about 74.6 % of the studies used students as their participants, while 28.4 % had samples composed of teachers (including pre- and in-service teachers). Finally, the results revealed that science education researchers in Taiwan tended to publish in either CJSE or international journals. Very few Taiwanese researchers published in both. Implications for the future of science education research in Taiwan are discussed in this chapter.

Eye movement patterns in solving scientific graph problems

Eye movement patterns of science- and non-science students in solving scientific graph problems were compared. Experts (science-students) tended to spend more time, compared to novices, to comprehend the questions during the first run / inspection. Concerning the main graph region, both the True and False subregions (corresponding to correct and wrong answer choices, respectively) were inspected carefully during the first run. Significant differences were observed in the second run, in which the False region was fixated longer when participants made wrong responses.