Effectiveness of the Auditory and Visual effects of Chinese e-Magazine on the Graduate Students’ Reading Process

• Main Authors: Bing Zhang, Elena Añaños, Min Zhang
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 2016-06-01
• Series: Anàlisi: Quaderns de Comunicació i Cultura
• Subjects: e-magazines; attention; eye tracker; digital context; reading; multimedia resources
• Online Access: https://analisi.cat/article/view/2552
• ISSN: 0211-2175; 2340-5236

We are in a digital society where new technologies are constantly emerging and old technologies are being upgraded faster than we can blink. Digital reading has become an important means of reading, but the visual process for digital and paper reading are different. With eye tracking technique, orthogonal design and regression model, this paper, analyzed audiences’ eye movement when reading Chinese e-magazine under visual and auditory stimulations. An experimental e-magazine was created and 80 graduate students were randomly selected. All participants underwent the same setup but under different stimuli; they had to read short sentences while an eye tracker records their eye movement; after completion, participants answer a comprehension questionnaire. The most important results, analyzed in terms of eye fixations, are that text dubbing and background colors have a significant effect on reading comprehension, which means that with text dubbing and cool colors, it can lead to a better reading comprehension. The findings obtained reveal a better knowledge of the e-magazine reading behavior and it can be applied to the design of digital magazines. However, it is necessary to perform specific cross-cultural studies and to unify the units of measurement of eye tracker and the units of measure of reading effectiveness.