表題番号:2019R-035 日付:2021/04/09
研究課題Eye movements during reading as a window to non-native speaker's language comprehension processes
研究者所属(当時) 資格 氏名
(代表者) 理工学術院 国際理工学センター(理工学術院) 准教授 ローランド ダグラス ウィリアム
研究成果概要
The goals of this project were to investigate the pattern of eye-movements of second language learners of English (i.e., Japanese speakers of English) while reading sentences containing relative clauses in order to investigate how non-native speakers process these structures. We collected data from 154 participants across three experiments. We found that while non-native speakers showed signs of difficulty in the same regions of the sentences that native speakers did, the difficulties were reflected differently in the patterns of eye movements. Specifically, while native speakers show evidence of processing difficulty in their initial fixations on a word, non-native speakers’ difficulties are reflected only in evidence of rereading. This suggests that non-native speakers are not processing language as immediately as native speakers. Unfortunately, we had to stop collecting eye movement data due to COVID19 safety precautions. However, we were able to collect additional reading time data from 120 native speakers of English using an on-line self-paced reading time task. This data will serve as a baseline point of comparison for future work on L2 speakers.