Ingeborg Endter 11/14/97
Problem set 9
My Legibility Tester.
This program can be used to test the readability of text. The same string
is presented each time. The total elapsed time for reading the text is 10
seconds for each of the variations. In the spirit of many of the studies
reviewed in "The Psychology of Reading," I have provided variables that
can be manipulated to observe their effect on legibility. I'm
particularly interested in the reader's ability to absorb the meaning of
the text as a whole, not just individual words. I'm trying to observe the
effect of text size, text placement on the page (Does it help the reader
to move the words across the page, as the eye usually scans printed
pages?), and word grouping, on reading comprehension.
The variations in word grouping are: words presented one at a time, words
presented in pairs - counting by two's from the beginning of the string,
and finally, words grouped in one's or two's keeping "meaningful pairs"
together. I am interested in whether the flow of the entire passage is
helped by selecting word pairs based on significance of the pair. For
example, here is the fragment "like being banished into forests far from
everyone," presented on the left in consecutive pairs, and on the
right in meaningful one's or pairs:
|
like being | like |
| banished into | being banished |
| forests far | into forests |
| from everyone | far |
| | from everyone |