Features of Scientific Text Perception: An Eye-T racking Study
Abstract
Academic reading, which involves working with scientific and popular science texts in an academic environment, according to surveys, causes difficulties for students. In addition to the style of the text, the complexity of the text, which is expressed in long and extended sentences, large volume, and the presence of terms, can also cause difficulties. Although studies often examine the influence of text style or text complexity on reading comprehension separately, their interaction and the specificities of reading in the mother tongue remain understudied. The purpose of the present study was to identify the contribution of style, text complexity and reading habit to the process of reading in the native (Russian) language. The experiment involved 43 first-year students of economic specialities of HSE University (35 women; Mage = 18.3; SD = 0.71; range - 18-22), 62% of whom regularly work with scientific texts. The materials of the study were 32 texts on economics: 16 journalistic and 16 scientific, distributed into three levels of complexity according to the «Textometer» tool. Students were asked to take turns reading the texts and answering short questions after reading. At this time, the participants' eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker. Statistical analyses of the results using linear mixed-effects models revealed a significant effect of text complexity only on the mean duration of fixations (Est. = 5.41, SE = 1.73, p-value = 0.01). Meanwhile, text style and regularity of engagement with scientific materials showed no significant effect on oculomotor metrics. Thus, the study confirms that it is text complexity, not text style, that has the main influence on the process of reading scientific texts in the native language.
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