Past studies in English and German texts have shown that a vertical striped word (one which consists of repetitive vertical stripe components) is associated with a longer reading and binocular fixation times. A biologically inspired reason related to binocular fixation has been proposed, which predicts that the prolonged reading time is caused by the additional effort from the binocular vision system to align an image with a high occurrence of vertical stripes projected on the left and right retinas. This study aims to investigate if the proposed theory is true in reading Chinese. In the first experiment, we planned to study whether similar effect persists in Chinese texts. Unlike English and German texts, Chinese text are not alphabetical but are logographic. Three thousand co...[ Read more ]

Past studies in English and German texts have shown that a vertical striped word (one which consists of repetitive vertical stripe components) is associated with a longer reading and binocular fixation times. A biologically inspired reason related to binocular fixation has been proposed, which predicts that the prolonged reading time is caused by the additional effort from the binocular vision system to align an image with a high occurrence of vertical stripes projected on the left and right retinas. This study aims to investigate if the proposed theory is true in reading Chinese. In the first experiment, we planned to study whether similar effect persists in Chinese texts. Unlike English and German texts, Chinese text are not alphabetical but are logographic. Three thousand common Chinese characters (taken from a Hong Kong Baptist University Language Center report) were analyzed into three groups: (i) character with more repetitive vertical stripes; (ii) character with less repetitive vertical stripes; and (iii) neutral, using horizontal autocorrelation as an objective measurement. Three measures were utilized in the categorization process based on horizontal autocorrelation; (i) the value of first peak of the horizontal autocorrelation; (ii) difference in value of first peak and the value of the preceding trough in horizontal autocorrelation; (iii) number of peaks of horizontal autocorrelation. The results from experiment 1 and 2 have shown that a character with more repetitive vertical stripes exhibits a significantly longer recognition time than a character with less repetitive vertical stripes. This suggests that the effect of vertical stripes is not restricted on alphabetical texts. In the third experiment gaze movement were recorded throughout to identify the binocular fixation duration for each character. Results suggests that the more repetitive the vertical stripe pattern was, the longer the binocular fixation durations. In summary, the presence of vertical stripes prolonged recognition time and binocular fixation duration of Chinese characters. According to the proposed theory, in a monocular viewing condition the recognition time and fixation duration shall not be affected by the presence of vertical stripes. In addition, the presence of vertical stripes should affect the recognition of a character regardless of the reading orientation. To put the proposed theory under the test, the fourth experiment studied 3 viewing conditions; (i) horizontal binocular viewing; (ii) vertical binocular viewing; (iii) horizontal monocular viewing (non-dominant eye to be occluded). As predicted by the theory, recognition time for character with more repetitive vertical stripes is significantly longer in condition (i) and (ii), but not in condition (iii). Binocular fixation duration (while in condition (iii) it would be monocular fixation duration), is significantly longer with character with more repetitive vertical stripes in condition (i) and (ii) but not in condition (iii). The fifth experiment utilized an iCub simulator and a biologically inspired binocular vergence model to simulate fixation on 288 Chinese characters with different levels of repeated vertical stripes. Results indicated that the model does reached a smaller binocular disparity viewing a character with more repetitive vertical stripes. This supports the proposed theory.