Background. The empirical studies in visual word recognition done over the past years have been focused on the influence of contextual, lexical, and semantic properties. Researchers also have taken into consideration the role of individual differences in the word recognition process, e.g., vocabulary knowledge. Objective. This study focuses on the cognitive strategies used by expert and novice language learners in a visual semantic search task. Our hypothesis is that the level of ESL (English as a Second Language) mastery would influence the word recognition and oculomotor patterns applied by the participants. Design. The participants-native Russian speakers-were divided into three groups according to their level of English language mastery. The experimental task involved a search for horizontally-or vertically-oriented English words in letter matrices (15*15); the frequency and length of the words varied. Performance measures (number and orientation of the found words) were registered, along with the participants' eye movements. Results. Word search efficiency depended on the frequency, length, and orientation of the words and the participant's language mastery; however, these factors did not interact. The data show that oculomotor events are denser in experts' results. Learners with different levels of language mastery use different information-processing patterns, which are reflected in the proportions of fixation and saccade durations. Two complementary trends were found: word search efficiency is effected, first, by a longer gaze scan path, and second, by the focal mode of visual information-processing, manifested in a combination of longer fixations and shorter saccades. Conclusion. The registration of eye-movement patterns in visual semantic search tasks reveals the characteristics of effective and non-effective cognitive strategies used by ESL students at different levels of language competence.
The article discusses the central problems of word recognition in native and foreign languages. Russian-speaking and Azerbaijani-speaking subjects were solving the visual semantic search task and were looking for Russian words among randomly arranged Cyrillic letters. Words were hidden in the 15x15 letter matrix, they were not spaced, consisted of 6-7 letters, were arranged either horizontally or vertically; half of the words included several identical letters, another half did not. Each matrix had ten words and had an emotional valence index and a frequency index. The recorded indices were the number of found stimuli and eye metrics. The study showed the effects of language knowledge, the arrangement of words in the matrix, their frequency and the letter set. The subjects were more likely to detect horizontally arranged words that have a higher frequency and several identical letters; the established regularity had a similar effect for both groups. The effect of emotional valence was weak only for the Azerbaijani-speaking subjects. The search in the native language was more effective due to the use of more effective strategies for cognitive processing of verbal material. The Russian-speaking subjects employed a consciously controlled strategy, associated with the use of mental resources and reflected in longer fixations and short saccades; the Azerbaijani-speaking subjects used a more chaotic strategy, covering a larger search space, associated with longer 65 НАУЧНЫЙ РЕЗУЛЬТАТ. ВОПРОСЫ ТЕОРЕТЙЧЕСКОЙ Й ПРЙКЛАДНОЙ ЛЙНГВЙСТЙКЙ RESEARCH RESULT. THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS saccades and shorter fixations. More complicated tasks (with lower-frequency lexemes) led to a change in strategies and the use of special skills of identifying words, which were different for both groups.
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