Reading saccades that occur within a single line of text are guided by the size of letters.However, readers occasionally need to make longer saccades (known as return-sweeps) that take their eyes from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next. In this study, we tested whether return-sweep saccades are also guided by font size information and whether this guidance depends on visual acuity constraints. To do this, we manipulated the font size of letters (0.29 vs 0.39º per character) and the length of the first line of text (16 vs 26º). The larger font resulted in return-sweeps that landed further to the right of the line start and in a reduction of corrective saccades compared to the smaller font. This suggests that font size information is used when programming return-sweeps and corrective saccades. Returnsweeps in the longer line condition landed further to the right of the line start and the proportion of corrective saccades increased compared to the short line condition. This likely reflects an increase in saccadic range error with the increase in saccade size. Critically, however, there was no interaction between font size and line length. This suggests that when programming return-sweeps, the use of font size information does not depend on visual acuity at the saccade target. Instead, it appears that readers rely on global typographic properties of the text in order to maintain an optimal number of characters to the left of their first fixation on a new line.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.