Eye movements of prereaders to pseudowords containing letters of high and low confusability

Nodine, Calvin F.; Evans, James D.

doi:10.3758/bf03210672

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…At first, the units sampled are limited to single letters and letter combinations, then words, and finally higher order units which are related to grammatical structures in written language. The present experiment was concerned with how the child deals with single letters and letter combinations and, as such, extends the findings of an earlier experiment by Nodine and Evans (1969) in which the same type of matching task was used. Although it was not technically possible to measure visual fixations to specific letters in the earlier experiment, both studies show the same pattern of quantitative differences for low-confusion pseudowords, namely, fewer fixations and less fixation time for unmatched relative to matched pairs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Development of visual scanning strategies for differentiating words.

Nodine¹,

Lang²

1971

Developmental Psychology

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Eye movements of nonreaders (kindergarten subjects) and readers (thirdgrade subjects) were measured during a visual discrimination task involving matched and unmatched pairs of four-letter pseudowords. Unmatched pairs were characterized by inversions in letter sequences. Task difficulty was manipulated by inserting letters of high or low confusability in the middleletter positions. Quantitative differences in eye-movement patterns were observed between matched and unmatched low-confusion pairs for kindergarten subjects, but not for third-grade subjects. These findings were interpreted within a distinctive-features-analysis framework. Qualitative differences in visual scanning patterns between readers and nonreaders were assessed by analysis of sequential probabilities of eye movements between high-information (target) and low-information (nontarget) letters of the pseudoword pair. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses support the conclusion that the development of perceptual strategies is a direct result of increasing cognitive control over eye movements.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Development of visual scanning strategies for differentiating words.

Nodine¹,

Lang²

1971

Developmental Psychology

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“…Nodine and his colleagues (Nodine & Evans, 1969;Nodine & Lang, 1971;Nodine & Simmons, 1974;Nodine & Steuerle, 1973) have reported a series of experiments in which children of different reading levels were required to make same-different judgments about pairs of letters or letter strings as their eye movements were recorded. When children were shown pseudoword pairs containing middle letters of either high confusability (e.g., ZPRN) or low confusability (EROI), Nodine found several qualitative differences between third grade readers and prereading kindergarten children.…”

Section: Developmental Changes In Eye Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements in reading and information processing.

Rayner¹

1978

Psychological Bulletin

908

525

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Recent studies of eye movements in reading and other information processing tasks, such as music reading, typing, visual search, and scene perception, are reviewed. The major emphasis of the review is on reading as a specific example of cognitive processing. Basic topics discussed with respect to reading are (a) the characteristics of eye movements, (b) the perceptual span, (c) integration of information across saccades, (d) eye movement control, and (e) individual differences (including dyslexia). Similar topics are discussed with respect to the other tasks examined. The basic theme of the review is that eye movement data reflect moment-to-moment cognitive processes in the various tasks examined. Theoretical and practical considerations concerning the use of eye movement data are also discussed.Many studies using eye movements to investigate cognitive processes have appeared over the past 20 years. In an earlier review, I (Rayner, 1978b) argued that since the mid-1970s we have been in a third era of eye movement research and that the success of research in the current era would depend on the ingenuity of researchers in designing interesting and informative studies. It would appear from the vast number of studies using eye movement data over the past 20 years that research in this third era is fulfilling the promise inherent in using eye movement behavior to infer cognitive processes. The first era of eye movement research extended from Javal's initial observations concerning the role of eye movements in reading in 1879 (see Huey, 1908) up until about 1920. During this era, many basic facts about eye movements were discovered. Issues such as saccadic suppression (the fact that we do not perceive information during an eye movement), saccade latency (the time that it takes to initiate an eye movement), and the size of the perceptual span (the region of effective vision) were of concern in this era. The second era, which coincided with the behaviorist movement in experimental psychology, tended to have a more applied focus, and little research was undertaken with eye movements to infer cognitive processes. Although classic work by Tinker (1946) on reading and by Buswell (1935) on scene perception was carried out during this era, in retrospect, most of the work seems to have focused on the eye movements per se (or on surface aspects of the task being investigated). Tinker's (1958) final review ended on the rather pessimistic note that almost every-

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“…The major notable exception is some work reported by Nodine and his colleagues (Nodine & Evans, 1969;Nodine & Lang, 1971;Nodine & Simmons, 1974;Nodine & Stuerle, 1973). In Nodine's experiments, children at the beginning level of reading and older children were asked to make same-different judgments about pairs of letters or letter strings as their eye movements were recorded.…”

Section: Eye Movements In Beginning Readersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Eye Movements in Learning to Read and Reading Disability

Rayner

1985

Remedial and Special Education

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The role of eye movements in learning to read and reading disability is reviewed. Characteristics of eye movements during reading for skilled, beginning, and disabled readers are discussed. It is argued that eye movements are not a cause of reading problems and that training children with reading problems to make smooth, efficient eye movements will not increase their reading ability. Rather, eye movement characteristics during reading reflect the difficulty that children have understanding written text. R EADING IS A complex skill to acquire. Although children learn to speak with relative ease, mastering reading generally requires a number of years of instruction and practice. There are many component processes involved in learning to read, one of which is gaining cognitive control of eye movements. Prior to reading, children do not have to focus their eyes and attention upon a relatively small region of the visual field. However, reading does require children to focus selectively on words in a left-to-right fashion as they read. In this paper, I will review the role of eye movements in learning to read and in reading disability. I should like to make clear at the outset that eye movements are a rather peripheral component of the reading process. In all but rather extreme cases (where, for example, neurological deficits in or damage to the saccadic eye movement system may make reading difficult), faulty eye movements do not cause reading problems (Rayner, 1985). However, eye movements are a good reflection of cognitive processes associated with the reading process. In that sense, it is important to understand eye movement behavior during reading. This paper first describes some of the basic facts about eye movements in skilled readers. This information is provided for comparison purposes and will be followed by a review of eye movement characteristics of beginning readers. Developmental changes in eye movement patterns and the perceptual span during reading will also be discussed, as will eye movement patterns in disabled readers. Eye Movements in Skilled ReadersSkilled readers move their eyes during reading on the average of every quarter of a second. The purpose of eye movements (which are called saccades) is to bring a given region of a line of text into foveal vision for detailed processing. A line of text can be divided into three regions with respect to the fixation point: foveal, parafoveal, and peripheral. The foveal region represents the area of central vision (approximately two degrees around the fixation point) in which clear detail can be obtained. In parafoveal vision (which extends five degrees in each direction from fixation), acuity is much poorer than in the fovea so that the probability of identifying a letter embedded in the middle of a three-letter string is at the chance level when the string is presented four or five degrees from fixation. The remainder of the line of text represents the peripheral area where acuity is much poorer than in the parafoveal region. For normal sized print held a...

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Eye movements of prereaders to pseudowords containing letters of high and low confusability

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

Development of visual scanning strategies for differentiating words.

Development of visual scanning strategies for differentiating words.

Eye movements in reading and information processing.

The Role of Eye Movements in Learning to Read and Reading Disability

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