Abstract:

Meta-analysis was used to investigate the effects of interword space in Chinese text reading. In the present study, 18 retrieved literatures were used, including 186 pairs of data which met the meta-analysis standard (n = 756). The results indicated that: (1) the overall effect of interword space on mean fixation duration, total fixation count of the whole sentence, first fixation duration, gaze duration, total reading time of target word, and fixation count of target word was 0.65, -0.12, 0.26, 0.58, 0.67 and 0.64 respectively. (2) Significant differences were revealed in the subgroups analysis: the effect of foreign students group was strikingly higher than Chinese students group on mean fixation duration, first fixation duration, gaze duration, total reading time of target word, and fixation count of target word. The spaced group was remarkably higher than the highlighted group on mean fixation duration. The lower level group was significantly higher than the higher level group on gaze duration, total reading time of target word, and fixation count of target word. The true word group was dramatically higher than the pseudo-word group on gaze duration, total reading time of target word, and fixation count of target word. The primary school students group was significantly higher than the college school students group on the total reading time of the target word.

Key words: interword spacing, Chinese, text reading, eye movements research, meta-analysis