How Do Stress Situations Affect Higher-Level Text Processing in L1 and L2 Readers? An Eye-Tracking Study

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Psychosocial stress negatively impacts reading comprehension.
• The specific effects of stress on distinct text processing stages remain under-investigated.
• Trait anxiety's role as a moderator of stress in text processing requires further exploration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how stress affects higher-level text processing (syntactic parsing, sentence integration, global text processing) in L1 and L2 English readers.
• To examine the moderating role of trait anxiety in stress-induced text processing changes.
• To differentiate stress effects on text processing based on language proficiency.

Main Methods:

• Utilized eye-tracking technology to record reading behaviors and analyze ten eye-movement metrics.
• Assessed reading comprehension tasks under varying stress conditions.
• Included 22 L1 and 21 L2 English readers.

Main Results:

• Stress reduced syntactic parsing and sentence integration efficiency in both L1 and L2 readers.
• Global text processing was impaired only in L2 readers under stress.
• L2 readers under stress focused more on text topic structure; L1 processing was linked to trait anxiety, L2 to proficiency.

Conclusions:

• Stress differentially affects higher-level text processing stages in L1 and L2 readers.
• Trait anxiety influences L1 readers, while language proficiency is key for L2 readers under stress.
• Findings inform interventions for stress management in language learning.