Eye Movements in Reading
Recording where and how long the eyes pause while reading provides a fine-grained, online window onto the cognitive processes of comprehension.
Definition
The study of the pattern and timing of fixations and saccades during reading and what they reveal about moment-to-moment language processing.
Scope
This topic covers the basic characteristics of reading eye movements (fixations, saccades, regressions, and the perceptual span), the lexical and contextual factors that influence fixation durations and word skipping, and computational models of eye-movement control. It describes eye tracking as a method and the processing inferences it supports.
Core questions
- What determines how long the eyes fixate a word and whether it is skipped?
- How large is the region of text processed during a single fixation?
- How is eye-movement control coordinated with ongoing word identification?
Key concepts
- fixation
- saccade
- regression
- perceptual span
- word skipping
- gaze duration
Key theories
- E-Z Reader model
- Reichle and colleagues' serial-attention model in which lexical processing of a word triggers the programming of the saccade to the next word, linking eye movements tightly to word identification.
- Eye-mind and processing-load account
- Rayner's synthesis that fixation durations reflect the difficulty of processing the currently fixated word, so frequency, predictability, and length modulate reading times.
History
Rayner's programmatic research from the 1970s onward established the core findings on reading eye movements, synthesized in his 1998 review, while the 1998 E-Z Reader model brought a computational account of eye-movement control.
Debates
- Serial versus parallel word processing
- Whether words are identified one at a time in strict sequence, as in E-Z Reader, or several words are processed in parallel during a fixation, as competing models propose.
Key figures
- Keith Rayner
- Erik Reichle
- Alexander Pollatsek
Related topics
Seminal works
- rayner1998
- reichle1998
- rayner2009
Frequently asked questions
- Do we read every word?
- No: readers skip a substantial proportion of words, especially short, frequent, and predictable ones, while fixating longer on rare or unpredictable words.