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Tracking the Eye Movement of Four Years Old Children Learning Chinese Words

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Abstract

Storybook reading is the major source of literacy exposure for beginning readers. The present study tracked 4-year-old Chinese children’s eye movements while they were reading simulated storybook pages. Their eye-movement patterns were examined in relation to their word learning gains. The same reading list, consisting of 20 two-character Chinese words, was used in the pretest, 5-min eye-tracking learning session, and posttest. Additionally, visual spatial skill and phonological awareness were assessed in the pretest as cognitive controls. The results showed that the children’s attention was attracted quickly by pictures, on which their attention was focused most, with only 13% of the time looking at words. Moreover, significant learning gains in word reading were observed, from the pretest to posttest, from 5-min exposure to simulated storybook pages with words, picture and pronunciation of two-character words present. Furthermore, the children’s attention to words significantly predicted posttest reading beyond socioeconomic status, age, visual spatial skill, phonological awareness and pretest reading performance. This eye-movement evidence of storybook reading by children as young as four years, reading a non-alphabetic script (i.e., Chinese), has demonstrated exciting findings that children can learn words effectively with minimal exposure and little instruction; these findings suggest that learning to read requires attention to the basic words itself. The study contributes to our understanding of early reading acquisition with eye-movement evidence from beginning readers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong

    Dan Lin, Yingyi Liu, Jiaxin Liu & Jue Pan

  2. Journalism and Communication College/National-level media experimental teaching demonstration center, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Guangyao Chen

  3. Centre for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China

    Lei Mo

Authors
  1. Dan Lin
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  2. Guangyao Chen
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  3. Yingyi Liu
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  4. Jiaxin Liu
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  5. Jue Pan
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  6. Lei Mo
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Correspondence to Dan Lin or Lei Mo.

Additional information

This research was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council General Research Fund (No: 18404014) to Dan Lin and by Philosophy and social sciences of Guangdong province ‘13th Five-Year’ planning project (GD16XXW01) to Guangyao Chen.

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Lin, D., Chen, G., Liu, Y. et al. Tracking the Eye Movement of Four Years Old Children Learning Chinese Words. J Psycholinguist Res 47, 79–93 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9515-x

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