Saccadic movements as a factor in visual perception in reading.

Effects of reading span and textual coherence on rapid-sequential reading

“…The present study illustrates the existence of individual differences for the usefulness of the RSVP procedure: the technique has shown advantages over the conventional page presentation method for a group of less efficient but capable adult readers. This result is striking but is consistent with previous findings that the execution of eye-movement control activities and the increasing complexity of visual display demand attention and processing resources and interfere with comprehension processing (see, e.g., Chen et al, 1985;Gilbert, 1959;Lawrence, 1971;Willows, 1974Willows, , 1978. Inaddition, Breitmeyer (1983) recently reviewed physiological and clinical data in reading and visual exploration and reported that visuosensory and visuomotor deficiencies are both important sources of reading difficulty.…”

“…Gilbert (1959), for example, reported that "readers can process simple prose material mentally at a faster rate and more accurately than they actually do when reading with saccadic movements" (p. 19). Indeed, researchers have found that elimination of the requirement for eye movements facilitates performance in visual search (Lawrence, 1971), in sentence recall (Gilbert, 1959;Potter et al, 1980), and in reading for comprehension (Raygor, 1974). The general research technique that has The author was supported by a dissertation fellowship from the University of Kansas while the present research was conducted and during the initial preparation of this article.…”

“…However, researchers have noted that reading mastery is not an easy goal to achieve, and there may be room for improvement even for skilled adult readers (see, e.g., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980;Gilbert, 1959;Juola, Ward, & McNamara, 1982;Potter, Kroll, & Harris, 1980;Raygor, 1974). Naturally, it is important to know what factors are responsible for the rate and effectiveness of reading.…”

The Span of Letter Recognition of Good and Poor Readers

“…There is no doubt that there are many factors which contribute to the reading ability of children. For example, it has been suggested that good readers are able to guide their eyes more efficiently than poor readers (Gilbert, 1959;Lefton, 1978;Lefton, Lahey, & Stagg, 1978). Several investigators believe that poor readers may have unsystematic attentional scanning patterns (Heron, 1957;Marcel, 1974).…”

Effects of presentation complexity on rapid-sequential reading

“…The authors are indebted to Mark Wagner and Kelly Maurice for their assistance in computer programming and to Jeff Kohen for help in preparing the scaling data of summaries for analysis in Experiment I. Address correspondence to Hsuan-Chih Chen, who is now at the Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong. regressions and mislocations of line beginnings by inaccurate eye movements; for relevant reviews see, e.g., Juola, Ward, & McNamara, 1982; and that planning and executing eye-movement control activities demand attention and processing resources (see, e.g., Gilbert, 1959;Lawrence, 1971;Rayner, Slowiaczek, Clifton, & Bertera, 1983). However, the need for eye movements in reading, and therefore the associated errors and resource demands, can be eliminated by using a method for text presentation called rapid, serial visual presentation (RSVP, Forster, 1970;Gilbert, 1959).…”