Eye movement study of the relationship between peripheral attention and information structure in Japanese

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H06245
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: Gifu University
• Principal Investigator: TAJIMA YAYOI 岐阜大学, 医学部, 准教授 (10758204)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 言語相対説 / 周辺認知 / 眼球運動 / 情報構造

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Previous studies found that Japanese native speakers pay more careful attention to the peripheral field of a given scene and it was interpreted as a result of the "Holistic Thought" shared by Asian peoples including Japanese. This study, however, hypothesizes that Japanese closer attention toward the peripheral is attributable to their linguistic habit that peripheral information is expected to precede more central information in their discourse. In order to examine this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment, where Japanese native speakers and English native speakers were asked to see a set of still images presented on the screen for a certain period of time under the two conditions: seeing the images with describing each scene and seeing them without describing. Their eye movements and verbal descriptions were recorded for analysis by Tobii X-30. Unfortunately, this experiment has not been fully completed yet. We plan to complete this research within this academic year.

Free Research Field

認知言語学