意味の有無がカタカナ文字提示課題における読み方に与える影響

抄録

This study investigates certain aspects of the reading process including starting location, reading direction, and eye movements within an 8 x 8 matrix made up of Japanese katakana characters representing either meaningful or meaningless content. Two experiments were conducted with both involving two task-conditions. Within Experiment 1, participants in one task-condition were asked to merely read matrices without specific instructions about content meaning, while participants in another task-condition were instructed to read quickly. In Experiment 2, all participants were asked to search and report whether matrices were meaningful, but participants in one task-condition were asked to read quickly while those in another task-condition were instructed to read accurately. The results indicate that, when instructed to read quickly, participants were more likely to read from the top-left corner and move to the right. Regardless of content meaning or instructions, reading from the top-right corner and moving to the left was less frequently, which suggests that it is regarded as being more difficult. Experiment 1 results indicate that searching for meaning was not a significant factor. The findings from both experiments suggest that both starting location and reading direction are influenced by the instructions provided.