ИСТИНА

Abstract. The study focuses on the intergroup differences in oculomotor activity of Russian and Japanese students in verbal search tasks. Subjects looked for English words in letter matrices (15x15) which contained 10 words each, horizontally and vertically oriented. Matrices were presented on a screen for 40 seconds. Each matrix was generated to present various conditions on word frequency, length and emotional valence of the searched words. During the search, the number of words found and eye-movement parametres were registered with SMI RED250. Oculomotor patterns of Japanese students showed shorter fixations (185.6 ms vs 218.2 ms at F(1;205)=29.15, p0.01) and higher saccade amplitudes (10.64 vs 4.99 deg. at F(1;205)=44.32, p0.01). Their visual strategy proved to be ambient and less efficient in this task as compared to that of Russians. Though the students were at the same level of English competence, the results can be explained through the differences in their linguistic experience. Keywords: linguistic experience, oculomotor activity, word search task, lexical decision, visual search strategies, eye-movement research.