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Eye Movements of Individuals with Different Cognitive Styles While Reading with Distraction

Author: XuZengJie
Tutor: LiShouXin
School: Shandong Normal University
Course: Basic Psychology
Keywords: inhibitory processes article reading cognitive style meaningfulness conditions predictability eye-tracking measures
CLC: B842.1
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2009
Downloads: 180
Quote: 2
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Abstract

In the process of the cognition, the inhibition is defined as the mechanism of preventing the irrelevant information from entering the working memory or eliminating the irrelevant information from the working memory. The function of the inhibition is access, deletion and restrainting. Access function works before the irrelevant information be activated, it inhibits distracting information from entering working memory, is called the former role of inhibitory processes; the purpose of the deletion function is to clear the working memory of irrelevant information, the role of restraint in inhibition is to control the urge to react with the first and strongest response, they are called the last role of inhibitory processes. The research of the inhibition in reading articles was significant. At present, researchers studying individual differences in inhibition mainly focused on different groups with different ages, different comprehension capacities and different working memory capacities. In the research of age-related difference, Connelly et al found that the inhibition mainly happened in the former role of inhibitory processes, however Dywan and Murphy et al found that the inhibition mainly happened in the last role of inhibitory processes. Both of the conclusions were supported by eyetracking research. Many studies indicated that individuals with different cognitive styles (field-dependence/ independence) has the difference in the inhibiting capacity. For solving the problem found in the reasearch of age-related differences, the proposed studies will examine cognitive styles differences in inhibitory processes using a reading with distraction paradigm.Compared with the traditional research measures, the advantage of the eye-tracking measures is simultaneous and with higher grade of ecological validity, so I adopt the eye-tracking measures .In this study, three experiments were conducted, one of them was reading behavioral research, others were subvocal reading eyetracking research. Experiment 1 initially studied the effect of cognitive styles and the distracting stimulus to the article reading inhibitory mechanism, which adopted 2 (cognitive style: FD, FI)×3 (distractor materal: true words distractors, false words distractors and no distractors) mixed factorial design. Cognitive styles was between-subject variables and distractor materal was within-subject variable; Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, the only difference was in Experiment 2 eye-tracking measures was adopted as a further disscusion to the results of Experiment 1; Experiment 3 studied the effect of cognitive styles and the predictable distracting conditions to the article reading inhibitory mechanism with the eye-tracking measures, which adopted 2 (cognitive style: FD, FI)×3 (distractor conditions: no distractors, distractors presented in predictable locations and distractors presented in unpredictable locations) mixed factorial design. Cognitive styles was between-subject variables and distractor conditions was within-subject variable.The results indicated: (1) The effects of distractor materal meaningfulness were different to the individuals with different cognitive styles, FD individuals were more effected; (2) The effects of distractor conditions were different to the individuals with different cognitive styles, FD individuals were more effected; (3) The distractor materal meaningfulness effected the inhibitory processes. Compared to the meaningless material, the distractor of the meaningful material was harder to inhibit; (4) The distractor conditions predictability effected the inhibitory processes. Compared to the predictable distracting conditions, the unpredictable distracting conditions were harder to inhibit; (5) In Experiment 2 , the differences between the FI individuals and FD Individuals of the total fixation durations and times were not significant , neither in Experiment 3. Therefore, these findings do provide support for the findings of Dywan et al(1995),who thought the inhibition mainly happened in the last role of inhibitory processes.

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