Особенности восприятия научного текста: видеоокулографическое исследование

Вопросы образования. 2026. № 1. С. 185–213.

Пушкарева Е. А., Корженевская А. Ю., Zdorova N., Lytaeva M. A., Dragoy O.

Academic reading, which involves working with scientific and popular science texts in an academic environment, according to surveys, causes difficulties for students. In addition to the style of the text, the high complexity of the text that is related to long and extended sentences, big text size, and the presence of specific terms, can also cause difficulties. Although studies often examine the influence of text style or text complexity on reading comprehension separately, their interaction while reading in a mother tongue remains understudied. The purpose of the present study was to identify the contribution of style, text complexity and reading habit to the process of reading in a native (Russian) language. The experiment involved 43 first-year students majoring in Economics at HSE University Moscow (35 women; Mage = 18,3; SD = 0,71; range — 18–22), 62% of whom regularly work with scientific texts. The materials of the study were 32 texts on economics topics: 16 journalistic and 16 scientific, distributed into three levels of complexity according to the “Textometer” tool [Laposhina, Lebedeva, 2021]. Students read the texts and answer short comprehension questions after reading. At this time, the participants’ eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker. Statistical analyses of the results using linear mixed-effects models revealed a significant effect of text complexity only on the mean duration of fixations (Est. = 5,41, SE = 1,73, p-value = 0,01). Meanwhile, text style and regularity of engagement with scientific materials showed no significant effect on oculomotor metrics. Thus, the study confirms that it is the text complexity, not text style, that has the main influence on the process of reading scientific texts in a native language.

Keywords: eye-tracking, scientific text, научный текст, публицистический текст, видеоокулография, text complexity, сложность текста, journalistic texts, понимание прочитанного текста, academic reading difficulties, трудности академического чтения, text style, reading comprehension of text, стиль текста

Publication based on the results of: Neural foundations of language and its impairments: From basic research to clinical practice (2025)