BEIJING, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have built a database recording eye-movement when reading Chinese, according to a recent research article published in the journal Scientific Data.
Eye movement is one of the most fundamental behaviors during reading. Over the last two decades, a growing number of Chinese reading studies have used eye-tracking techniques and provided a rich resource showing the complex cognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese reading.
The database was developed by the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When reading 8,551 Chinese words, nine eye-movements were recorded from 1,718 participants who took part in the 57 Chinese sentence reading experiments, noted the research article.
The database enables researchers to efficiently test their theoretical and computational hypotheses on Chinese reading using a large number of words, as well as indicating the processing difficulty of Chinese words during text reading.
Using the database, researchers can control and manipulate the difficulty level of Chinese texts and accurately match appropriate reading materials to suit the reader's abilities. ■
