Saccadic eye movements during reading

Exposure duration and sequential redundancy are major determinants of report accuracy for textual displays. Increased emission of left-to-right saccades to both word strings and letter strings are associated with sequential redundancy. Such saccades are more frequent when words rather than pseudowords are viewed. The pattern of scanning is not simply left to right, and certain patterns of eye movements are associated positively with accuracy of report. These are a function of the sequential constraints of the display and are stronger for word strings than for letter strings. Presence of a word elicits more left-to-right saccades than does a pseudoword, even at exposures too short for a second fixation to be useful. In that case, there is no difference between redundant and nonredundant pseudowords. There is no redundancy effect at short exposures of pseudosentences.     

Saccadic eye movements and reading difficulties

Saccadic eye movements of 14 children with reading difficulties and of 14 normal readers were compared before and after the problem readers underwent a seven month individual tutoring program. At pretesting the problem readers showed a rate of eye movements that was markedly lower than that of the normal readers whose rate they attained and surpassed at completion of the remedial reading program. Results are discussed in terms of the presumed function of saccadic eye movements and their relation to reading, attention, and information gathering.This study was supported by grant OEG-2-2-2BO24 from the National Institute of Education. The valuable assistance of Mark J. Fischer and the help of Sandra Armel, Steven Rayack, and Betty White are gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Lowey, of the Three Village School District and particularly Mr. Hanrahan, Principal of Main Street School, greatly facilitated our work and we are most grateful.     

Inferences about predictable events: eye movements during reading

 Eye fixations were recorded to assess whether, how, and when readers draw inferences about predictable events. Predicting context sentences, or non-predicting control sentences, were presented, followed by continuation sentences in which a target word referred to a predictable event (inferential word) or an unlikely event (non-predictable word). There were no effects on initial target word processing measures, such as launch and landing sites, fixation probability, first-fixation duration, or first-pass reading time. However, relative to the control condition, the predicting context (1) speeded up reanalysis of the inferential word, as revealed by a reduction in second-pass reading time and regressions, and (2) interfered with processing of the non-predictable word, as shown by an increase in regressions. These results indicate that predictive inferences are active at late text integration processes, rather than at early lexical-access processes. The pattern of findings suggests that these inferences involve initial activation of rather general concepts following the inducing context, and that they are completed or refined with delay, after the inferential target word is read. Received: 4 January 2000 / Accepted: 23 October 2000     

Covert attention and eye movements during reading

Eye movements were monitored during the reading of spatially transformed text in order to examine covert attentional processes in reading. In some conditions, the sequence of letters within a word was congruent with (i.e. in the same direction as) the sequence of words in the sentence; in other conditions the direction of letters within words and the direction of words in the sentence were incongruent. In addition, the window of visible text was varied so that in some conditions only the fixated word (and all preceding words) were visible, whereas in other conditions the fixated word and the succeeding word were both visible. Readers were able to extract more parafoveal information from text when the words themselves were normal than when the letters within the words were transformed. However, with practice, readers were able to use some parafoveal information even when the words were transformed. The most important finding was that the congruity of the word and letter order had no reliable effect on the ability to extract parafoveal information and influenced reading performance only when the words themselves were normal. We conclude that covert attention in reading is not a letter-by-letter scan that sweeps across the page, but either an asymmetric spotlight held constant on each fixation or a shifting of an attentional spotlight extending across multiletter units (possibly words) with the direction of shifts of attention closely coupled to the direction of eye movements.     

Linguistic focus affects eye movements during reading

In two experiments, we explored how readers encode information that is linguistically focused. Subjects read sentences in which a word or phrase was focused by a syntactic manipulation (Experiment 1) or by a preceding context (Experiment 2) while their eye movements were monitored. Readers had longer reading times while reading a region of the sentence that was focused than when the same region was not focused. The results suggest that readers encode focused information more carefully, either upon first encountering it or during a second-pass reading of it. We conclude that the enhanced memory representations for focused information found in previous studies may be due in part to differences in reading patterns for focused information.     

Oculomotor and cognitive control of eye movements in reading: Evidence from mindless reading

In the present study, we investigated the influence of cognitive factors on eye-movement behaviors in reading. Participants performed two tasks: a normal-reading task, as well as a mindless-reading task in which letters were replaced with unreadable block shapes. This mindless-reading task served as an oculomotor control condition, simulating the visual aspects of reading but removing higher-level linguistic processing. Fixation durations, word skipping, and some regressions were influenced by cognitive factors, whereas eye movements within words appeared to be less open to cognitive control. Implications for models of eye-movement control in reading are discussed.     

Vowel processing during silent reading: evidence from eye movements

Two eye movement experiments examined whether skilled readers include vowels in the early phonological representations used in word recognition during silent reading. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which the vowel phoneme was concordant or discordant with the vowel phoneme in the target word. In Experiment 1, the orthographic vowel differed from the target in both the concordant and discordant preview conditions. In Experiment 2, the vowel letters in the preview were identical to those in the target word. The phonological vowel was ambiguous, however, and the final consonants of the previews biased the vowel phoneme either toward or away from the target's vowel phoneme. In both experiments, shorter reading times were observed for targets preceded by concordant previews than by discordant previews. Implications for models of word recognition are discussed.     

Effects of syntactic prominence on eye movements during reading

Three experiments explored whether patterns of eye movements during reading might help explain syntactic prominence effects that are typically observed using reaction time tasks. Participants read sentences in which target words were in syntactically prominent or syntactically less prominent positions. Across all three experiments, using three types of syntactic prominence manipulations, there were fewer fixations and shorter reading times for words in more prominent positions, indicating that enhanced accessibility of syntactically prominent words is not caused by increased processing time. Rather, syntactic prominence appears to facilitate early encoding/lexical access and sentence integration processes while also, as shown previously, increasing activation of concepts in a comprehender’s sentence or discourse representation. We propose that enhanced encoding and sentence integration processes can be attributed to an increase in attentional resources for more prominent concepts, and that this increase derives from readers’ immediate sensitivity to informational prominence contours that are signaled by syntax.     

Effects of text variables on eye movements in reading

Eye movement patterns in four atypical text formats were examined. Regressive eye movements were a sensitive indicator of reading disruption due to the textual manipulations of type (all capitals vs unusual) and margin (justification vs nonjustification). The capitals nonjustified format was easiest to read while the unusual justified format was most difficult. Reading speed was a less sensitive measure than regressions.     

The effect of plausibility on eye movements in reading

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences describing events in which an individual performed an action with an implement. The noun phrase arguments of the verbs in the sentences were such that when thematic assignment occurred at the critical target word, the sentence was plausible (likely theme), implausible (unlikely theme), or anomalous (an inappropriate theme). Whereas the target word in the anomalous condition provided evidence of immediate disruption, the effect of the target word in the implausible condition was considerably delayed. The results thus indicate that when a word is anomalous, it has an immediate effect on eye movements, but that the effect of implausibility is not as immediate.     

Measuring word recognition in reading: eye movements and event-related potentials

The investigation of visual word recognition has been a major accomplishment of cognitive science. Two on-line methodologies, eye movements and event-related potentials, stand out in the search for the holy grail - an absolute time measure of when, how and why we recognize visual words while reading. Although each technique has its own experimental limitations, we suggest, by means of review and comparison, that these two methodologies can be used in complementary ways to produce a better picture of the mental action we call reading.     

The orthographic uniqueness point and eye movements during reading

Recent research found that naming and lexical decision times for words with an early orthographic uniqueness point (OUP) were faster than for words with a late OUP ( Kwantes & Mewhort, 1999a ; Lindell, Nicholls, & Castles, 2003 ). A word's OUP corresponds to the letter position in the word where that word is differentiated from other words. These results have been presented as evidence for sequential letter processing in visual word recognition ( Kwantes & Mewhort, 1999a ). In two experiments, we attempted to extend these results to a more natural reading situation by recording participants’ eye movements. Readers read sentences with early or late OUP words embedded in them. In both experiments, we manipulated the amount of parafoveal information available during reading. Readers did not show any consistent benefit for reading words with an early OUP regardless of the amount of preview available. Our results are at odds with the naming and lexical decision data and prove problematic for models that predict OUP effects.     

Inhibitory neighbor priming effects in eye movements during reading

We report an eye movement experiment investigating whether prior processing of a word’s orthographic neighbor in a sentence influences subsequent word processing during reading. There was greater difficulty in early word processing when a target word’s neighbor rather than a control word appeared earlier in a sentence; this effect was uninfluenced by the relative lexical frequency of the word and its neighbor. We discuss this inhibitory neighbor priming effect in terms of competitive network models of word recognition and the process of lexical identification in the E-Z Reader model of oculomotor control (e.g., Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998).     

The function of regressions in reading: Backward eye movements allow rereading

Standard text reading involves frequent eye movements that go against normal reading order. The function of these “regressions” is still largely unknown. The most obvious explanation is that regressions allow for the rereading of previously fixated words. Alternatively, physically returning the eyes to a word’s location could cue the reader’s memory for that word, effectively aiding the comprehension process via location priming (the “deictic pointer hypothesis”). In Experiment 1, regression frequency was reduced when readers knew that information was no longer available for rereading. In Experiment 2, readers listened to auditorily presented text while moving their eyes across visual placeholders on the screen. Here, rereading was impossible, but deictic pointers remained available, yet the readers did not make targeted regressions in this experiment. In Experiment 3, target words in normal sentences were changed after reading. Where the eyes later regressed to these words, participants generally remained unaware of the change, and their answers to comprehension questions indicated that the new meaning of the changed word was what determined their sentence representations. These results suggest that readers use regressions to reread words and not to cue their memory for previously read words.     

The word grouping hypothesis and eye movements during reading

The distribution of landing positions and durations of first fixations in a region containing a noun preceded by either an article (e.g., the soldiers) or a high-frequency 3-letter word (e.g., all soldiers) were compared. Although there were fewer first fixations on the blank space between the high-frequency 3-letter word and the noun than on the surrounding letters (and the fixations on the blank space were shorter), this pattern did not occur when the noun was preceded by an article. R. Radach (1996) inferred from a similar experiment that did not manipulate the type of short word that 2 words could be processed as a perceptual unit during reading when the first word is a short word. As this different pattern of fixations is restricted to article-noun pairs, it indicates that word grouping does not occur purely on the basis of word length during reading; moreover, as the authors demonstrate, one can explain the observed patterns in both conditions more parsimoniously without adopting a word-grouping mechanism in eye movement control during reading.     

Retinal masking during pursuit eye movements: implications for spatiotopic visual persistence

White (1976) reported that presentation of a masking stimulus during a pursuit eye movement interfered with the perception of a target stimulus that shared the same spatial, rather than retinal, coordinates as the mask. This finding has been interpreted as evidence for the existence of spatiotopic visual persistence. We doubted White's results because they implied a high degree of position constancy during pursuit eye movements, contrary to previous research, and because White did not monitor subjects' eye position during pursuit; if White's subjects did not make continuous pursuit eye movements, it might appear that masking was spatial when in fact it was retinal. We attempted to replicate White's results and found that when eye position was monitored to ensure that subjects made continuous pursuit movements, masking was retinal rather than spatial. Subjects' phenomenal impressions also indicated that retinal, rather than spatial, factors underlay performance in this task. The implications of these and other results regarding the existence of spatiotopic visual persistence are discussed.     

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements during reading

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements in reading was examined. Readers read passages in which a target category noun referred to either a high typical or a low typical antecedent. In addition, the category noun was either clause final or non-clause final. There were four primary results: (1) Readers looked longer at a category noun when its antecedent was a low typical member of the category than when it was a high typical member; (2)readers looked longer at the category noun and at the post-category region when they were clause final than when they were not clause final; (3) readers regressed from a category noun or post-category region more frequently when it was clause final than when it was not clause final; and (4) readers made longer initial saccades when their eyes left the category noun or post-category region when this word was in clause final position than when it was not clause final. The last result suggests that sometimes higher order processes that are related to making a decision about when to move the eyes impinge on lower level decisions that are typically associated with deciding where to move the eyes.     

The influence of text legibility on eye movements during reading

Subjects read passages of text on a video monitor as their eye movements were recorded. In Experiment 1, the passages were presented either in a format (ClearType) designed to display smoother, clearer characters on LCD monitors by eliminating pixilation or in standard format (non‐ClearType). The passages were also presented in three different fonts (Times New Roman, Harrington and Script MT bold) which differed in how easy the letters were to encode. While there were no comprehension differences due to ClearType or font, ClearType led to faster reading, fewer fixations, and shorter fixation durations than non‐ClearType. There were also font differences, with Times New Roman leading to faster reading than the other two fonts. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results that ClearType lead to faster reading than non‐ClearType when subjects read single sentences with high or low frequency target words. Across both experiments, word frequency interacted with presentation format. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mislocated fixations can account for parafoveal-on-foveal effects in eye movements during reading

Contrasting predictions of serial and parallel views on the processing of foveal and parafoveal information during reading were tested. A high-frequency adjective (young) was followed by either a high-frequency word_n (child) or a low-frequency word_n (tenor), which in turn was followed by either a correct (performing) or an orthographic illegal word_{n + 1} (pxvforming) as a parafoveal preview. A limited parafoveal-on-foveal effect was observed: There were inflated fixation times on word_n when the preview of word_{n + 1} was orthographically illegal. However, this parafoveal-on-foveal effect was (a) independent of the frequency of word_n, (b) restricted to those instances when the eyes were very close to word_{n + 1}, and (c) associated with relatively long prior saccades. These observations are all compatible with a mislocated fixation account in which parafoveal-on-foveal effects result from saccadic undershoots of word_{n + 1} and with a serial model of eye movement control during reading.