ABSTRACT
Chinese landscape painting is a complex form of visual art. More researchers pay more attention to the creation process and expressed intention of landscape painting. However, the appreciation of works of visual art is often related to cognitive processing, and it is influenced by the content of the works. This study hypothesized that the information of the figure in landscape paintings could guide the allocation of attention and affect cognitive processing. To test this hypothesis, the vertical landscape paintings of the Song and Ming Dynasties were used as experimental materials in the experiment, and the eye-movement technology was applied to record and compare the differences of the eye-movement indexes of landscape paintings with and without figures. The results showed that the dwell time of landscape painting with figure was significantly longer than that of landscape painting without figure, and the dwell time of the interest area of the figure was significantly longer than that of the interest area without figure. However, the first three fixation duration of the interest area with figures is significantly less than that of the interest area without figure, and there was no difference in the saccade counts and the distribution of fixation points between different landscape paintings. It suggested that the figure in the landscape painting can attract peoples' attention, but it does not have attention priority. Meanwhile, peoples tend to holistic processing when they viewing the vertical landscape paintings, and it is not influenced by the information of figure.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The ability to translate concrete manipulatives into abstract mathematical formulas can aid in the solving of mathematical word problems among students, and metacognitive prompts play a significant role in enhancing this process. AIMS: Based on the concept of semantic congruence, we explored the effects of metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality on information searching and cognitive processing, throughout the process of solving mathematical word problems among primary school students in China. SAMPLE: Participants included 73 primary school students (38 boys and 35 girls) with normal or corrected visual acuity. METHODS: This study was based on a 2 (prompt information: no-prompt, metacognitive-prompt) × 2 (number attribute: cardinal number, ordinal number) mixed experimental design. We analysed multiple eye-movement indices, such as fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, and pupil size, since they pertained to the areas of interest. RESULTS: When solving both types of problems, pupil sizes were significantly smaller under the metacognitive-prompt condition compared with the no-prompt condition, and shorter dwell time for specific sentences, conditional on metacognitive prompts, indicated the optimization of the presented algorithm. Additionally, the levels of fixation durations and saccadic amplitudes were significantly higher when solving ordinal number word problems compared with solving ordinal number problems, indicating that primary school students were less efficient in reading and faced increased levels of difficulty when solving ordinal number problems. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that for Chinese upper-grade primary school students, cognitive load was lower in the metacognitive prompting condition and when solving cardinal problems, and higher when solving ordinal problems.
