Investigation of Chinese reading comprehension performance on mass rapid transit

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of display type, reading content, and background music on accuracy, change of critical fusion frequency (CFF) and subjective visual fatigue while performing a reading comprehension task on mass rapid transit (MRT). Thirty-two participants were recruited in a three-way mixed factorial experiment to investigate the influence of three types of display (liquid crystal display, electronic paper display, and plain paper), three types of reading content (science, literature, and magazine) and four types of background music (none, light music, pop music and heavy metal music). The results showed that display type was significant in all indices, where electronic paper displays and plain papers showed the better accuracy and lower change of CFF than liquid crystal displays. Plain papers demonstrated the lowest subjective visual fatigue. The results also indicated that reading content was significant on accuracy and subjective visual fatigue, where reading comprehension was better with magazines than with science- and literary-related texts. The results further demonstrated that background music was significant on subjective visual fatigue, where heavy metal music resulted in the greater visual fatigue than the three other kinds of music. Based on the results of this study, reading paper magazines and avoiding noisy music will lead to the lowest level of visual fatigue and, thus, enhance Chinese comprehension on MRT. Participants who are used to listening to music should be included as a test group in future studies.Relevance to industryThis study provides suggestions for using suitable displays while reading on MRT. This information could serve as a reference for mobile display manufacturers in designing their future products.