Title: Eye-tracking in Audiovisual Multimodal Text Research: Applications, Progress and Prospects

Abstract: The objective indicators and high ecological validity enable the eye-tracking technology to be widely used in fixed text reading research. It is until 1980s that eye-tracker has been used for investigating audiovisual multimodal text reading behavior and its cognitive mechanism. Starting from a brief introduction of eye-tracking technology history, this article offers a review of more than 20 years’ eye-tracking experiments in audiovisual multimodal text research, by summarizing the main indicators, research topics and remaining problems. It concludes by discussing the prospects of applying eye-tracking technology in future audiovisual multimodal text research.

Keywords: Eye-tracking, multimodal text, subtitle, eye-movement indicators

Author: Jianhua Wang, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China; Jing Li, School of Foreign Studies, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.