Reading Direction and the Central Perceptual Span in Urdu and English

Abstract

BackgroundNormal reading relies on the reader making a series of saccadic eye movements along lines of text, separated by brief fixational pauses during which visual information is acquired from a region of text. In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, the region from which useful information is acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend further to the right of each fixation than to the left. However, the asymmetry of the perceptual span for alphabetic languages read in the opposite direction (i.e., from right to left) has received much less attention. Accordingly, in order to more fully investigate the asymmetry in the perceptual span for these languages, the present research assessed the influence of reading direction on the perceptual span for bilingual readers of Urdu and English.Methods and FindingsText in Urdu and English was presented either entirely as normal or in a gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm in which a region of text was displayed as normal at the reader's point of fixation and text outside this region was obscured. The windows of normal text extended symmetrically 0.5° of visual angle to the left and right of fixation, or asymmetrically by increasing the size of each window to 1.5° or 2.5° to either the left or right of fixation. When participants read English, performance for the window conditions was superior when windows extended to the right. However, when reading Urdu, performance was superior when windows extended to the left, and was essentially the reverse of that observed for English.ConclusionThese findings provide a novel indication that the perceptual span is modified by the language being read to produce an asymmetry in the direction of reading and show for the first time that such an asymmetry occurs for reading Urdu.

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

“…Footnotes 1. It seems likely that this directional influence is reversed for languages read from right to left (e.g., Jordan, Almabruk, Gadalla, McGowan, White, Abedipour, & Paterson, 2014;Paterson, McGowan, White, Malik, Abedipour, & Jordan, 2014;Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981) although the precise parameters and nature of the left and right components of the perceptual span in such languages remain to be determined.…”

“…It seems likely that the rightward perceptual span for rightwards-read languages reflects forward-directed processes that are aligned to the general direction of reading (e.g., Jordan, Almabruk, Gadalla, McGowan, White, Abedipour, & Paterson, 2014;Paterson, McGowan, White, Malik, Abedipour, & Jordan, 2014;Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981). 1 Indeed, acquiring information from words to the right of each fixation is likely to be driven by attentional influences and by the importance of previews of words that have yet to be identified, both of which appear to contribute considerably to efficient and effective reading (e.g., Rayner, 2009).…”

“…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), indicating that the perceptual span to the right of fixation is relatively large whereas the perceptual span to the left of fixation is strikingly small.It seems likely that the rightward perceptual span for rightwards-read languages reflects forward-directed processes that are aligned to the general direction of reading (e.g., Jordan, Almabruk, Gadalla, McGowan, White, Abedipour, & Paterson, 2014;Paterson, McGowan, White, Malik, Abedipour, & Jordan, 2014;Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981). 1 Indeed, acquiring information from words to the right of each fixation is likely to be driven by attentional influences and by the importance of previews of words that have yet to be identified, both of which appear to contribute considerably to efficient and effective reading (e.g., Rayner, 2009).…”

Oculomotor and linguistic processing effects in reading dynamic horizontally scrolling text.

“…Given the constraint of the attentional window by spatial deployment of finite attentional resources (Jordan et al, 2013;Miellet, O'Donnell, & Sereno, 2009;Paterson et al, 2014), it may well be expected that the extent of these attentional windows would be constricted by the conflict in attentional deployment when reading scrolling text, reducing parafoveal availability of text and thus average progressive saccade length. This may occur via increased foveal processing difficulty: in other situations, an increase in foveal load has been proposed to reduce the rightward extent of the attentional window (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990;White, Rayner, & Liversedge, 2005).…”

Actes du Symposium international sur la litéracie à l’école = International Symposium for Educational Literacy (SILE/ISEL)

“…The perceptual span is also related to the written characteristics of the language that is read. For example, the perceptual span of Israeli or Urdu readers is asymmetric to the left because the reading direction of these languages is leftwards (Paterson et al, 2014;Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981).…”