Comparison of reading capacity for Japanese, German, and English.

The amount of information which can be perceived at a glance offers important indicators for text layout. Studies of the size of the effective visual field and average saccade length, in different languages, have clarified the visual capacity for reading. However, most of these studies examined only one language, and their results are reported as number of characters perceived at a glance, which, given differences in writing systems, precludes comparing results between languages. In the present study, reading capacity for Japanese, German, and English was compared using the amount of information perceived at a glance. There was up to 20 bits per fixation for Japanese and German random character strings, and 40 to 50 bits per fixation for texts written in all three languages, with no significant difference between languages. These results suggest that capacity for reading a native language is constant, regardless of language.