Eye Movements and the Perceptual Span in Reading

Buurman, Rudy Den; Roersema, Theo; Gerrissen, Jack F.

doi:10.2307/747557

Cited by 45 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…According to such a model, the restricted range of particularly long target distances in the present experiment might have created the quantitative differences in comparison to reading. The range of the long target word distances used in the present experiment may also explain why we did not observe effects of the length of the target words, since the positions of the right boundaries of the target words in the present experiment most frequently fell outside the perceptual span of approximately 14–15 letters to the right of the current fixation position (DenBuurman, Boersma & Gerrissen, 1981; McConkie & Rayner, 1975; Rayner, 1986). Thus, visual information about the lengths of the target words was nearly absent in most of the trials.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Fixation positions after skipping saccades: A single space makes a large difference

Krügel¹,

Vitu²,

Engbert³

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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During reading, saccadic eye movements are generated to shift words into the center of the visual field for lexical processing. Recently, Krügel and Engbert (Vision Research 50:1532–1539, 2010) demonstrated that within-word fixation positions are largely shifted to the left after skipped words. However, explanations of the origin of this effect cannot be drawn from normal reading data alone. Here we show that the large effect of skipped words on the distribution of within-word fixation positions is primarily based on rather subtle differences in the low-level visual information acquired before saccades. Using arrangements of “x” letter strings, we reproduced the effect of skipped character strings in a highly controlled single-saccade task. Our results demonstrate that the effect of skipped words in reading is the signature of a general visuomotor phenomenon. Moreover, our findings extend beyond the scope of the widely accepted range-error model, which posits that within-word fixation positions in reading depend solely on the distances of target words. We expect that our results will provide critical boundary conditions for the development of visuomotor models of saccade planning during reading.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13414-012-0365-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Fixation positions after skipping saccades: A single space makes a large difference

Krügel¹,

Vitu²,

Engbert³

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…This parafoveal perceptual span grows with reading experience in childhood (Forgays, 1953;Rayner, 1986). Furthermore, the span seems to have its own directionality, as it extends more to the right than to the left for left-to-right readers, and vice versa for right-to-left readers (de Buurman, Roersema, & Gerrissen, 1981;McConkie & Rayner, 1975, 1976Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1980;. A similar extension of the parafoveal field of view has been found in visual detection and visual search tasks with letter targets (Bertera & Rayner, 2000;Bouma, 1973).…”

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confidence: 65%

The influence of literacy on visual search

et al. 2014

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Currently one in five adults is still unable to read despite a rapidly developing world. Here we show that (il)literacy has important consequences for the cognitive ability of selecting relevant information from a visual display of non-linguistic material. In two experiments we compared low to high literacy observers on both an easy and a more difficult visual search task involving different types of chicken. Low literates were consistently slower (as indicated by overall RTs) in both experiments. More detailed analyses, including eye movement measures, suggest that the slowing is partly due to display wide (i.e. parallel) sensory processing but mainly due to post-selection processes, as low literates needed more time between fixating the target and generating a manual response. Furthermore, high and low literacy groups differed in the way search performance was distributed across the visual field. High literates performed relatively better when the target was presented in central regions, especially on the right. At the same time, high literacy was also associated with a more general bias towards the top and the left, especially in the more difficult search. We conclude that learning to read results in an extension of the functional visual field from the fovea to parafoveal areas, combined with some asymmetry in scan pattern influenced by the reading direction, both of which also influence other (e.g. non-linguistic) tasks such as visual search

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“…This perceptual span was found to be asymmetric: 3±4 characters (1.3) to the left, but about 15 characters to the right (5) in left to right readers [7,27] and vice versa in right to left readers [22]. Within this perceptual span there is a ªword identification spanº of 3±4 letter spaces to the left and 7±8 letter spaces (2) to the right [29,39].…”

Section: Influence Of Clinical Parametersmentioning

confidence: 87%