Extraction of information to the left of the fixated word in reading.

Binder, Katherine S.; Pollatsek, Alexander; Rayner, Keith

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.25.4.1162

Cited by 75 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Moreover, the finding that both regressive and progressive saccades were affected by text to the left of fixation makes it unlikely that these influences depend on leftward shifts of attention when reading. In contrast, the influences of text to the left of fixation that have been reported by other researchers may suggest that those influences occur only when a greater allocation of attention has been made to the left, and so occur with regressive saccades (Apel et al, 2012) and word skipping (Binder et al, 1999). Thus, while some aspects of eye movement behavior are associated with shifts in attention, the influence of leftward interword spaces that we observed in our study does not appear to rely on such shifts.…”

contrasting

confidence: 55%

“…Binder, Pollatsek, and Rayner (1999) found that changing the identity of the word to the left of the currently fixated word (and so, farther away than the widely reported leftward extent of the perceptual span) disrupted performance relative to when the word remained unchanged. In a similar vein, Rayner, Castelhano, and Yang (2009) found that performance was disrupted when the word to the left of the fixated word comprised only xs during each fixational pause, and Apel, Henderson, and Ferreira (2012) found that regression performance was disrupted when the word to the left of the fixated word was composed of replacement letters.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

What’s left? An eye movement study of the influence of interword spaces to the left of fixation during reading

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In English and other alphabetic systems read from left to right, the useful information acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend 14-15 character spaces to the right of each fixation, but only 3-4 character spaces to the left, and certainly no farther than the beginning of the fixated word. However, this leftward extent is remarkably small and seems inconsistent with the general bilateral symmetry of vision. Accordingly, in the present study we investigated the influence of a fundamental component of text to the left of fixation-interword spaces -using a well-established eyetracking paradigm in which invisible boundaries were set up along individual sentence displays that were then read. Each boundary corresponded to the leftmost edge of a word in a sentence, so that as the eyes crossed a boundary, interword spaces in the text to the left of that word were obscured (by inserting a letter x). The proximity of the obscured text during each fixational pause was maintained at one, two, three, or four interword spaces from the left boundary of each fixated word. Normal fixations, regressions, and progressive saccades were disrupted when the obscured text was up to three interword spaces (an average of over 12 character spaces) away from the fixated word, while four interword spaces away produced no disruption. These findings suggest that influential information from text is acquired during each fixational pause from much farther leftward than is generally realized and that this information contributes to normal reading performance. Implications of these findings for reading are discussed.Keywords Reading . Perceptual span . Interword spaces . Eye movements Normal reading relies on making saccadic eye movements along lines of text and ending each movement with a brief fixational pause, during which visual information is acquired. In this way, eye movements and fixational pauses provide visual information from a range of different areas on each line, and this contributes to the processing of text during reading (for a review, see Rayner, 2009).However, the extent of the area at each fixational pause within which information influences reading (the perceptual span) appears to be quite limited. In particular, estimates of the perceptual span have been reported using an eyetracking technique in which a fixed area of text extending outward from each point of fixation is displayed normally during reading, but text outside this area is replaced (e.g., with xs). Using this technique, several studies have demonstrated that skilled readers of English, and of other alphabetic systems read from left to right, obtain useful information from an asymmetric area that extends 14-15 character spaces to the right of fixation, but no more than 3-4 character spaces to the left, and certainly no farther than the beginning of the fixated word (e.g.,

show abstract

contrasting

confidence: 55%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s left? An eye movement study of the influence of interword spaces to the left of fixation during reading

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast, when influences of text to the left of fixation have been observed in other research, one indication is that these influences occur only with regressive saccades (Apel et al, 2012; see also Binder et al, 1999), and so may occur only when a greater allocation of attention has been made to the left of fixation prior to a saccade being made in that direction (although see Rayner et al, 2009). Thus, it seems that while some aspects of eye movement behaviors may be associated with shifts in attention, the influences of leftward letter content observed in the present study do not rely on such shifts.…”

Section: Postview Effects In Reading 21mentioning

confidence: 78%

A further look at postview effects in reading: An eye-movements study of influences from the left of fixation.

Jordan¹,

McGowan²,

Kurtev³

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When reading from left to right, useful information acquired during each fixational pause is widely assumed to extend 14-15 characters to the right of fixation but just 3-4 characters to the left, and certainly no further than the beginning of the fixated word. However, this leftward extent is strikingly small and seems inconsistent with other aspects of reading performance and with the general horizontal symmetry of visual input. Accordingly, two experiments were conducted to examine the influence of text located to the left of fixation during each fixational pause using an eye-tracking paradigm in which invisible boundaries were created in sentence displays. Each boundary corresponded to the leftmost edge of each word so that, as each sentence was read, the normal letter content of text to the left of each fixated word was corrupted by letter replacements that were either visually similar or visually dissimilar to the originals. The proximity of corrupted text to the left of fixation was maintained at 1, 2, 3, or 4 words from the left boundary of each fixated word. In both experiments, relative to completely normal text, reading performance was impaired when each type of letter replacement was up to two words to the left of fixated words but letter replacements further from fixation produced no impairment. These findings suggest that key aspects of reading are influenced by information acquired during each fixational pause from much further leftwards than is usually assumed. Some of the implications of these findings for reading are discussed.Key Words: Reading, perceptual span, eye-movements Postview Effects in Reading 3 Normal reading relies on making saccadic eye-movements along lines of text and ending each movement with a brief fixational pause, during which time information is acquired (for a review, see Rayner, 2009). However, the area of text from which the information acquired at each fixational pause actually influences reading (the perceptual span) appears to be quite limited. In particular, assessments of the perceptual span are typically obtained using eye-tracking techniques in which areas of text extending leftwards or rightwards from each point of fixation are displayed normally during reading while text outside these areas is deliberately corrupted (e.g., by substituting different letters for the originals). Since these techniques were first introduced (McConkie & Rayner, 1975, 1976, it has become reported as standard that the findings show that skilled reading of languages read from left to right (such as English) is influenced by information from an asymmetric area that extends 14-15 characters to the right of fixation but no more than 3-4 characters to the left, and certainly no further leftwards than the beginning of each fixated word.Indeed, this standard view continues to be reported widely in the literature (e.g., Blythe, 2014;Rayner, 2014;Rayner, Yang, Schuett, & Slattery, 2014;Veldre & Andrews, 2014;Risse, Hohenstein, Kliegl & Engbert, 2014;Yan, Zhou, Shu, & Kliegl, 2015), ind...

show abstract

“…The change was implemented within one screen refresh, was made during the saccade itself, and the saccade started some distance away from the critical word (cf. Binder, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1999), so participants were unable to see the change itself (Matin, 1974).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Booth

Weger

2012

Mem Cogn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Extraction of information to the left of the fixated word in reading.

Cited by 75 publications

References 25 publications

What’s left? An eye movement study of the influence of interword spaces to the left of fixation during reading

What’s left? An eye movement study of the influence of interword spaces to the left of fixation during reading

A further look at postview effects in reading: An eye-movements study of influences from the left of fixation.

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About