Optimal line length for reading schoolbook on screen

Although experimental studies have shown a strong impact of text layout on the legibility of e- text, many digital texts appearing in eBook or the internet use different designs, so that there is no straightforward answer in the literature over which one to follow when designing e- material. Therefore, in this paper we shall focus on the text layout, particularly the influence of line lengthen reading performance of e-school book.48 native Arabic students (24 male and 24 female) volunteered for this experiment. The participants’ age ranged from 9 to 13. Performance of students was assessed through two dependent variables: (1) time to complete each tasks; and (2) accuracy of the answers. Accuracy data was based on the number of correct answers the students provided and the total score was 12 points. Several findings were reported by this experiment such as; the time needed to complete all the question models becomes significantly low when students are older, errors for all the question models are expected to be significantly lower for older students. Reading text on a single column with double columns shows that the reading process is affected by the students’ age, as older students were faster when reading through double columns, while students aged 9 prefer the single column in both reading processes. The study has recommended double line for fast reading for students their reading performance is satisfactory. While, long line has suggested for students with difficulty in reading

What Makes a Font Persuasive?: An Eye-Tracking Study of Perception in American and Chinese Assessment of Fonts

Professional, technical, and visual communication practitioners and academics have historically overlooked visual rhetoric and how it is employed in business communications as well as how various cultures comprehend and respond to the design elements and visual composition of business documents. More specifically typography, the building blocks of a document, has been little explored in professional and technical communication research. As such, this study utilizes eye-tracking technology in conjunction with other data collection methods to understand if and how fonts contribute to the persuasiveness of business communications and if different cultures vary in typeface assessment and perception. Mackiewicz and Brumberger have both examined typeface anatomy and its effect on perception of font personality. Similar methods are implemented in this study to determine if the anatomical characteristics of fonts contribute to the perception of typeface persuasiveness in business documents. Furthermore, this study also seeks to establish if any correlations exist in typeface persuasiveness between American and Chinese cultures. Through this study, it was discovered that there are in fact anatomical characteristics of typefaces that lend themselves to a font being perceived as persuasive. It was also found that the perception of persuasiveness differs between the two cultures, and the methods by which the two groups assess the typefaces for persuasiveness are quite distinct

Measuring the difficulty of text translation: The combination of text-focused and translator-oriented approaches

This paper explores the impact of text complexity on translators’ subjective perception of translation difficulty and on their cognitive load. Twenty-six MA translation students from a UK university were asked to translate three English texts with different complexity into Chinese. Their eye movements were recorded by an eye-tracker, and their cognitive load was self-assessed with a Likert scale before translation and NASA-TLX scales after translation. The results show that: (i) the intrinsic complexity measured by readability, word frequency and non-literalness was in line with the results received from informants’ subjective assessment of translation difficulty; (ii) moderate and positive correlations existed between most items in the self-assessments and the indicator (fixation and saccade durations) obtained by the eye-tracking measurements; and (iii) the informants’ cognitive load as indicated by fixation and saccade durations (but not for pupil size) increased significantly in two of the three texts along with the increase in source text complexity

Effects of intraword and interword spacing on eye movements during reading: Exploring the optimal use of space in a line of text

Two eye movement experiments investigated intra-word spacing (the space between letters within words) and inter-word spacing (the space between words) to explore the influence these variables have on eye movement control during reading. Both variables are important factors in determining the optimal use of space in a line of text, and fonts differ widely in how they employ these spaces. Prior research suggests that the proximity of flanking letters influences the identification of a central letter via lateral inhibition or crowding. If so decrements in intra-word spacing may produce inhibition in word processing. Still other research suggests that increases in intra-word spacing can disrupt the integrity of word units. In English, inter-word spacing has a large influence on word segmentation and is important for saccade target selection. The results indicate interplay between intra and inter word spacing which influence a font’s readability. Additionally, these studies highlight the importance of word segmentation processes and have implications for the nature of lexical processing (serial vs. parallel)

On the usefulness of Aaa-links for controlling text size on web pages : preliminary results

Aaa-links, also known as triple-a links, have over the last few years become commonplace on the web. In a move to become more universally accessible organizations have introduced Aaa-links to help users with reduced vision. This study questions this practice. Three related research questions are posed. First, how is text enlargement functionality best represented visually? Second, are these Aaa-inks really making the web-browsing experience more comfortable for users? Third, is it better to use built-in browser text-enlargement functionality? A small user test involving 30 individuals was conducted. The preliminary results suggest that the effectiveness of Aaa-links is overrated

Music-reading expertise modulates the visual span for English letters but not Chinese characters.

Recent research has suggested that the visual span in stimulus identification can be enlarged through perceptual learning. Since both English and music reading involve left-to-right sequential symbol processing, music-reading experience may enhance symbol identification through perceptual learning particularly in the right visual field (RVF). In contrast, as Chinese can be read in all directions, and components of Chinese characters do not consistently form a left-right structure, this hypothesized RVF enhancement effect may be limited in Chinese character identification. To test these hypotheses, here we recruited musicians and nonmusicians who read Chinese as their first language (L1) and English as their second language (L2) to identify music notes, English letters, Chinese characters, and novel symbols (Tibetan letters) presented at different eccentricities and visual field locations on the screen while maintaining central fixation. We found that in English letter identification, significantly more musicians achieved above-chance performance in the center-RVF locations than nonmusicians. This effect was not observed in Chinese character or novel symbol identification. We also found that in music note identification, musicians outperformed nonmusicians in accuracy in the center-RVF condition, consistent with the RVF enhancement effect in the visual span observed in English-letter identification. These results suggest that the modulation of music-reading experience on the visual span for stimulus identification depends on the similarities in the perceptual processes involved

Combining Language---A Study of English-Chinese Bilingual Typography

Due to increased globalization, English and Chinese typographies have been used together and have come to characterize many publications and educational materials, commonly appearing in airports, museums and city shopping districts. This MFA thesis is inspired by this realization and is geared toward enhancing new methods for balancing English-Chinese bilingual typography in print.;Key Words: English, Chinese, Bilingual, Typography, Print Publication