An eye tracking study of line spacing effects on reading Simplified Chinese

Abstract

This paper presents an eye tracking study of how interlinear line spacing affects simplified Chinese reading. In a within-subjects design, we collected data from 35 subjects reading articles formatted in a variety of seven conditions of line spacing. Total reading time, number of fixations, average fixation duration, average saccade length and regression rate were computed. For the smallest line spacing, average saccade length and regression rate were significantly shorter compared to other conditions. However, there were no significant differences across seven conditions in terms of total reading time, number of fixations as well as average fixation duration.