Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 20, 2026

Eye-tracking to Distinguish Comprehension-based and Oculomotor-based Regressive Eye Movements During Reading
Published on: October 18, 2018
Establishing a role for the visual complexity of linguistic stimuli in age-related reading difficulty: Evidence from
1Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Hexi, District, Tianjin, 30037, China.
Abstract:
Older adults experience greater difficulty compared to young adults during both alphabetic and nonalphabetic reading. However, while this age-related reading difficulty may be attributable to visual and cognitive declines in older adulthood, the underlying causes remain unclear. With the present research, we focused on effects related to the visual complexity of written language. Chinese is ideally suited to investigating such effects, as characters in this logographic writing system can vary substantially in complexity (in terms of their number of strokes, i.e., lines and dashes) while always occupying the same square area of space, so that this complexity is not confounded with word length. Nonreading studies suggests older adults have greater difficulty than young adults when recognizing characters with high compared to low numbers of strokes. The present research used measures of eye movements to investigate adult age differences in these effects during natural reading. Young adult (18-28 years) and older adult (65+ years) participants read sentences that included one of a pair of two-character target words matched for lexical frequency and contextual predictability, but composed of either high-complexity (>9 strokes) or low-complexity (≤7 strokes) characters. Typical patterns of age-related reading difficulty were observed. However, an effect of visual complexity in reading times for words was greater for the older than for the younger adults, due to the older readers experiencing greater difficulty identifying words containing many rather than few strokes. We interpret these findings in terms of the influence of subtle deficits in visual abilities on reading capabilities in older adulthood.
More Related Videos
06:33Decomposing the Variance in Reading Comprehension to Reveal the Unique and Common Effects of Language and Decoding
Published on: October 11, 2018
06:52Using Cholesky Decomposition to Explore Individual Differences in Longitudinal Relations between Reading Skills
Published on: September 17, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Uncertainty in Measurement: Reading Instruments
The Evidence for Evolution
Aging
Cellular Clock Theory
The cellular clock theory posits that the human lifespan is closely tied to the finite capacity of cells to divide, a phenomenon governed by telomeres, which are protective caps at the ends of...
Anatomical Movements
Here are some common anatomical movements:
Flexion and extension motions are in the sagittal (anterior–posterior) plane of motion. These movements take place at the shoulder, hip, elbow, knee, wrist,...
The Movement of Organelles and Vesicles
Movement Joints in Buildings
The simplest type of movement joints, working joints, are...