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Background. The empirical studies in visual word recognition done over the past years have been focused on the influence of contextual, lexical, and semantic properties. Researchers also have taken into consideration the role of individual differences in the word recognition process, e.g., vocabulary knowledge. Objective. This study focuses on the cognitive strategies used by expert and novice language learners in a visual semantic search task. Our hypothesis is that the level of ESL (English as a Second Language) mastery would influence the word recognition and oculomotor patterns applied by the participants. Design. The participants-native Russian speakers-were divided into three groups according to their level of English language mastery. The experimental task involved a search for horizontally-or vertically-oriented English words in letter matrices (15*15); the frequency and length of the words varied. Performance measures (number and orientation of the found words) were registered, along with the participants' eye movements. Results. Word search efficiency depended on the frequency, length, and orientation of the words and the participant's language mastery; however, these factors did not interact. The data show that oculomotor events are denser in experts' results. Learners with different levels of language mastery use different information-processing patterns, which are reflected in the proportions of fixation and saccade durations. Two complementary trends were found: word search efficiency is effected, first, by a longer gaze scan path, and second, by the focal mode of visual information-processing, manifested in a combination of longer fixations and shorter saccades. Conclusion. The registration of eye-movement patterns in visual semantic search tasks reveals the characteristics of effective and non-effective cognitive strategies used by ESL students at different levels of language competence.

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The study explores the effects of graphological and semantic foregrounding on speech and gaze behavior in textual information construal of subjects with higher and lower impulsivity. Eye movements of sixteen participants were recorded as they read drama texts with interdiscourse switching (semantic foregrounding), with features of typeface distinct from the surrounding text (graphological foregrounding). Discourse modification patterns were analyzed and processed in several steps: specification of participant/object/action/event/perspective modification, parametric annotation of participants’ discourse responses, contrastive analysis of modification parameter activity and parameter synchronized activity. Significant distinctions were found in eye movement parameters (gaze count and initial fixation duration) in subjects with higher and lower impulsivity when reading parts of text with graphological foregrounding. Impulsive subjects tended to visit the areas more often with longer initial fixations than reflective subjects, which is explained in terms of stimulus-driven attention, associated with bottom-up processes. However, these differences in gaze behavior did not result in pronounced distinctions in discourse responses, which were only slightly mediated by impulsivity/reflectivity.

An experiment in the dual-task paradigm was carried out to explore the nature of domain-specific and domain-general resource distribution in working memory. The subjects (N = 32) performed symmetry span and letter reading span tasks under visuospatial (tapping) and verbal (articulatory suppression) cognitive load. The effects of task type and cognitive load modality were analyzed. The results are described within the concentric model framework: significant distinctions in relative accuracy under visuospatial and verbal cognitive load in visuospatial and verbal tasks were observed when N elements in the set exceeded the region of direct access capacity, while no such effect was observed for 2–3 element sets. This is attributed to domain-general resources in the region of direct access, and domain-specific resources in the activated long-term memory. We also found evidence for the asymmetric distribution of visuospatial and verbal working memory resources in that the verbal component is more susceptible to cognitive load.

This paper proposes Event-modelling Framework (EMF) to explore the systemic Event construal effects onto gaze. In two eye tracking experiments examining monomodal and cross-modal switches with a total number of 898 gaze probes of Text and Picture Areas of Interest (AOIs), we investigated gaze behavior variations produced by Event construal registered in 61 parameters of Referent, Event Frame and Perspective construal. 5 non-aliased gaze metrics served to assess the significance of Event construal effects and scale them. The results contribute to the research field of ergonomic optimization in visual and reading tasks.

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