Eye movements and the perceptual span in older and younger readers.

Rayner, Keith; Castelhano, Monica S.; Yang, Jinmian

doi:10.1037/a0014300

Cited by 147 publications

(264 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(55 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

212

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…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: 82%

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

Section: Postview Effects In Reading 21mentioning

confidence: 82%

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

show abstract

“…Moreover, it is widely argued that older adults compensate for such slower lexical processing by adopting a risky reading strategy with which they are more likely to infer the identities of upcoming words on the basis of prior context and only partial word information (e.g., Rayner et al, 2006Rayner et al, , 2009. As a consequence, older adults are more likely than young adults to skip words and also tend to make longer progressive saccades.…”

Section: Eye Movements and Ageing In Chinese Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

Zang

Zhang

Bai

et al. 2016

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.

show abstract

“…One possibility is that this effect was influenced by the bilingual abilities of the participants taking part in our study. However, recent evidence (using English text) from non-Arab/English bilingual populations suggests that the leftward component of the perceptual span for English is actually substantially larger than is generally assumed (Jordan, McGowan, & Paterson, 2012; see also Apel, Henderson, & Ferreira, 2012;Binder, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1999;Rayner, Castelhano, & Yang, 2009). Accordingly, given the reciprocal nature of the central perceptual span across Arabic and English indicated by the present study, it may well be the case that reading generally benefits from information acquired from an area of text around the point of fixation that is more symmetrical than previously thought.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

Reading direction and the central perceptual span: Evidence from Arabic and English

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Eye movements and the perceptual span in older and younger readers.

Cited by 147 publications

References 23 publications

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

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

Effects of word frequency and visual complexity on eye movements of young and older Chinese readers

Reading direction and the central perceptual span: Evidence from Arabic and English

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About