Using an eye tracker to examine the effect of prior knowledge on reading processes while reading a printed scientific text with multiple representations

ABSTRACT

Readers' prior knowledge is an important factor for comprehending scientific texts. The study used an eye tracker to examine the reading processes of the undergraduates with high (HPK) and low prior knowledge (LPK) while reading a long printed scientific article. The results of measuring the eye movements offered some interesting findings. First, HPK readers are more capable of using multiple representations and know the importance of scientific diagrams for reading comprehension; the results revealed that HPK readers spent significantly longer fixation durations on representational and statistical diagrams and had higher percentages of transitional fixations between text and diagrams than did LPK readers. Second, LPK readers were much more text-driven; the total fixation durations on text was significantly higher for the LPK readers than for the HPK readers, and they also exhibited a tendency to read the diagram captions rather than the diagrams after reading the text. Third, mature readers in both groups would engage in self-regulating their reading strategy to slow down their reading speed for processing more important information. This study overcame technical limitations and recorded readers' eye movements in a real print reading situation which may open the path to assess broader issues in future reading research.

KEYWORDS:

• Eye movements
• prior knowledge
• reading processes
• scientific text
• multiple representations

Acknowledgements

I thank Miss Yi-Jye Wu for collecting the data and Dr. Leo Yuk Ting Cheung for statistical consultation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported from the grant MOST 110-2636-H-003-003- and MOST 111-2636-H-003-003- under Young Scholar Fellowship Program by Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan, and the ‘Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences’ and ‘Higher Education Deep Cultivation Project’ of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.