A Legibility Study of Chinese Character Complicacy and Eye Movement Data

Abstract

This study investigated the correlations between the complicacy and legibility of Chinese characters by using eye tracking analyzed with structural equation modeling. 13 university students, 6 men and 7 women, with a mean age of 21 yr. ( SD = 1.7) participated. The results indicated that block types affected legibility and that saccade amplitude, number of fixations, and complicacy differed due to diverse character structures. Structural Equation Modeling showed that the number of strokes, number of nodes, and image density in stroke complicacy affected the number of fixations and saccade amplitude in eye movement data. Constructing a character complicacy and eye tracking information model to investigate the correlations between Chinese character features and human viewing behavior can provide guidance for Chinese character recognizability and type design.