Effects of Normative Aging on Eye Movements during Reading

Abstract

Substantial progress has been made in understanding the mostly detrimental effects of normative aging on eye movements during reading. This article provides a review of research on aging effects on eye movements during reading for different writing systems (i.e., alphabetic systems like English compared to non-alphabetic systems like Chinese), focused on appraising the importance of visual and cognitive factors, considering key methodological issues, and identifying vital questions that need to be addressed and topics for further investigation.

Vision through Healthy Aging Eyes

“…Smooth pursuits are often interrupted with catch-up saccades [81,88]. One must recognize that visual tracking and reaction time are attention sensitive, which is independently adversely affected as people age [89]. Numerous elements of the saccade movement are affected including an increase in the direction error rate (although there are disagreements between studies) and a variability in accuracy specifically in anti-saccades but it is generally preserved in pro-saccades and reaction times [80,88].…”

“…Briefly, one must consider not only accurate saccade movements but also perceptual span (the area of the text or how many letters a fixation encompasses) and where in a word the individual lands each saccade (at the beginning, center or end of the word) [89,90]. Research indicates a possible increased difficulty in using parafoveal information in older adults as well as noted longer fixations and more regressions, a result of skipping, which occurs due to inaccurate saccades [85,89]. These changes can manifest both when navigating through space as well as when trying to read.…”

“…Determining the peripheral field is threefold: seeing the object, the localization of an object in space and the speed of movement of the object [85,89]. There is a general constriction of functional visual fields and peripheral vision especially when the surroundings demand divided attention [85,89]. The loss is occasionally defined as an absolute scotoma and occasionally as a functional loss.…”

A further look at ageing and word predictability effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from one-character words

“…It remains to be more fully understood, however, whether this predictive use of context changes across the adult lifespan (for reviews, see Gordon et al, 2015; Paterson et al, 2020). Research on normative ageing shows that older adults (aged 65+ years) read more slowly than young adults (aged 18–30 years), by making more and longer fixations, and more backwards eye movements (regressions; e.g., Kliegl et al, 2004; McGowan et al, 2014; Paterson et al, 2013a, 2013b; Rayner et al, 2006; Stine-Morrow et al, 2010; Warrington et al, 2018, 2019; Whitford & Titone, 2016, 2017).…”

Adult age differences in parafoveal preview effects during reading: Evidence from Chinese.

“…Despite their greater experience of reading, older adults (aged 65+ years) tend to read less fluently than young adults (aged 18-30 years). This is reflected in slower reading by older adults, due to their dwelling for longer on words (i.e., making more and longer eye fixations) and making more backwards eye movements (i.e., regressions) to re-read text (for reviews, see Gordon et al, 2016;Paterson et al, 2020). Various factors are hypothesized to contribute to this less fluent reading in older age, including that older adults process information from upcoming words (i.e., in parafoveal vision) less effectively compared to young adults (e.g., Rayner et al, 2009Rayner et al, , 2010.…”