What Is the Difference? Rereading Shakespeare’s Sonnets —An Eye Tracking Study

Abstract

Texts are often reread in everyday life, but most studies of rereading have been based on expository texts, not on literary ones such as poems, though literary texts may be reread more often than others. To correct this bias, the present study is based on two of Shakespeare's sonnets. Eye movements were recorded, as participants read a sonnet then read it again after a few minutes. After each reading, comprehension and appreciation were measured with the help of a questionnaire. In general, compared to the first reading, rereading improved the fluency of reading (shorter total reading times, shorter regression times, and lower fixation probability) and the depth of comprehension. Contrary to the other rereading studies using literary texts, no increase in appreciation was apparent. Moreover, results from a predictive modeling analysis showed that readers' eye movements were determined by the same critical psycholinguistic features throughout the two sessions. Apparently, even in the case of poetry, the eye movement control in reading is determined mainly by surface features of the text, unaffected by repetition.

The Effects of Emotional Design on Multimedia Learning and Appreciation of Chinese Poetry

“…In sum, the current literature mainly examines influences of surface features of poetry, such as rhythm, emotional tonality, and motif, on the appreciation of poetry. However, few studies have focused on the deep comprehension of poetry texts and their transfer applications (Xue et al, 2020), especially in the study of Chinese poetry. For example, existing studies focus more on whether there is a violation of the rhyme on the level of phonology (Chen et al, 2016), and whether they are esthetically beautiful merely by subjective evaluation (Gao and Guo, 2018).…”

“…Therefore, in addition to induced emotions and motivation, other factors specific to the attributes of disciplines that affect learning outcomes may be present. For example, understanding and appreciation of readers of poetic texts are influenced by surface psycholinguistic features (Xue et al, 2020). Third, the internal emotional design elements of the learning material used vary in different studies.…”

Rhythmic subvocalization: An eye-tracking study on silent poetry reading

“…c) Layout. Most of the ongoing discussion about the role of layout, i.e., poem vs. prose (Fabb, 2009;Hanauer, 1996), as well as the function of features such as rhyme, focuses on the potential to affect categorization, reading strategy and tempo, comprehension and memory processes as well as aesthetic appreciation (Hanauer, 1998a(Hanauer, , 1998bHoffstaedter, 1987;Menninghaus & Wallot, 2021;Peskin, 2007;Xue et al, 2020;Zwaan, 1991). Important in the context of our study is that when reading poetry, top-down processes, termed genre-effect, can impact attention strategies (Hanauer, 1996(Hanauer, , 1998b.…”

Sentiment Analysis of Children and Youth Literature: Is There a Pollyanna Effect?

“… Lüdtke and Jacobs, 2015 ), have to be answered by future studies. We believe that predictive modeling studies using advanced computational text analysis tools like SentiArt (e.g., Jacobs, 2017 ; Xue et al, 2019 , 2020 ) are not the only but surely a very promising way of finding out which of these possibilities come near to reality, which, of course, also involves effects of the preceding and following context, and of reader personality factors such as mood ( Lüdtke et al, 2014 ; Jacobs et al, 2016b ).…”