Keith Rayner

Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research.

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.

Making and Correcting Errors during Sentence Comprehension: Eye Movements in the Analysis of Structurally Ambiguous Sentences

Eye movements were recorded as subjects read sentences containing temporary structural ambiguities. In accord with the garden-path theory of sentence comprehension, shorter reading times were found for sentences conforming to certain independently motivated parsing strategies (late closure and minimal attachment) than for comparable sentences which violate these strategies. Further, longer fixation durations were associated with the very first fixation in the region of the sentence which disambiguated the sentence, suggesting that the human sentence-parsing mechanism operates in a rather systematic fashion, immediately computing the structural consequences of fixated material for the analysis of preceding material. The pattern of regressive eye movements did not conform to the view that the parsing mechanism automatically returns to the beginning of the sentence to revise an incorrect analysis of linguistic material nor did it support the view that the parsing mechanism systematically backtracks through the sentence until the source of the erroneous analysis is located. Rather, the pattern of regressions indicated that the parsing mechanism typically engages in selective reanalysis, exploiting whatever information it has available about the type of error it has committed to guide its reanalysis attempts. Finally, it is emphasized that an understanding of the parsers revision procedures is essential to an explanation of why certain linguistic structures cannot be successfully parsed by humans.

Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search

Eye movements are now widely used to investigate cognitive processes during reading, scene perception, and visual search. In this article, research on the following topics is reviewed with respect to reading: (a) the perceptual span (or span of effective vision), (b) preview benefit, (c) eye movement control, and (d) models of eye movements. Related issues with respect to eye movements during scene perception and visual search are also reviewed. It is argued that research on eye movements during reading has been somewhat advanced over research on eye movements in scene perception and visual search and that some of the paradigms developed to study reading should be more widely adopted in the study of scene perception and visual search. Research dealing with “real-world” tasks and research utilizing the visual-world paradigm are also briefly discussed.

The span of the effective stimulus during a fixation in reading

A computer-based eye-movement controlled, display system was developed for the study of perceptual processes in reading. A study was conducted to identify the region from which skilled readers pick up various types of visual information during a fixation while reading. This study involved making display changes, based on eye position, in the text pattern as the subject was in the act of reading from it, and then examining the effects these changes produced on eye behavior. The results indicated that the subjects acquired word-length pattern information at least 12 to 15 character positions to the right of the fixation point, and that this information primarily influenced saccade lengths. Specific letter- and word-shape information were acquired no further than 10 character positions to the right of the fixation point.

Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: effects of word frequency, verb complexity, and lexical ambiguity

Two experiments investigated whether lexical complexity increases a word’s processing time. Subjects read sentences, each containing a target word, while their eye movements were monitored. In experiment 1, mean fixation time on infrequent words was longer than on their more frequent controls, as was the first fixation after the Infrequent Target. Fixation Times on Causative, factive, and negative verbs and ambiguous nouns were no longer than on their controls. Further analyses on the ambiguous nouns, however, suggested that the likelihood of their various meanings affected fixation time. This factor was investigated in experiment 2. subjects spent a longer time fixating ambiguous words with two equally likely meanings than fixating ambiguous words with one highly likely meaning. The results suggest that verb complexity does not affect lexical access time, and that word frequency And the presence of two highly likely meanings may affect lexical access and/or postaccess integration.

How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading

This monograph discusses research, theory, and practice relevant to how children learn to read English. After an initial overview of writing systems, the discussion summarizes research from developmental psychology on childrens language competency when they enter school and on the nature of early reading development. Subsequent sections review theories of learning to read, the characteristics of children who do not learn to read (i.e., who have developmental dyslexia), research from cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience on skilled reading, and connectionist models of learning to read. The implications of the research findings for learning to read and teaching reading are discussed. Next, the primary methods used to teach reading (phonics and whole language) are summarized. The final section reviews laboratory and classroom studies on teaching reading. From these different sources of evidence, two inescapable conclusions emerge: (a) Mastering the alphabetic principle (that written symbols are associated with phonemes) is essential to becoming proficient in the skill of reading, and (b) methods that teach this principle directly are more effective than those that do not (especially for children who are at risk in some way for having difficulty learning to read). Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics instruction does help make reading fun and meaningful for children, but ultimately, phonics instruction is critically important because it helps beginning readers understand the alphabetic principle and learn new words. Thus, elementary-school teachers who make the alphabetic principle explicit are most effective in helping their students become skilled, independent readers.

The E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading: Comparisons to other models

The E-Z Reader model (Reichle et al. 1998; 1999) provides a theoretical framework for understanding how word identification, visual processing, attention, and oculomotor control jointly determine when and where the eyes move during reading. In this article, we first review what is known about eye movements during reading. Then we provide an updated version of the model (E-Z Reader 7) and describe how it accounts for basic findings about eye movement control in reading. We then review several alternative models of eye movement control in reading, discussing both their core assumptions and their theoretical scope. On the basis of this discussion, we conclude that E-Z Reader provides the most comprehensive account of eye movement control during reading. Finally, we provide a brief overview of what is known about the neural systems that support the various components of reading, and suggest how the cognitive constructs of our model might map onto this neural architecture.

The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing: eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences

Two experiments explored the effects of semantic and pragmatic information on the syntactic analysis of ambiguous sentences. In both experiments, eye movements were recorded as subjects read structurally ambiguous sentences. The first experiment showed that the relative plausibility of two possible real world events does not influence the language processors choice of an initial syntactic analysis of an ambiguous string: clear garden-path effects were observed in both relatively plausible and relatively implausible reduced relative clauses, while no garden-path effect was observed for simple active clauses. The second experiment showed that semantic and pragmatic considerations do govern the ultimate analysis of an ambiguous sentence but that structural preferences, and their agreement with the final analysis, governed reading times. Reading times were significantly shorter for sentences where the pragmatically more plausible analysis of the sentence coincided with the analysis preferred on purely structural grounds than for sentences where the pragmatically preferred analysis conflicted with the structurally preferred analysis. Taken together, the results of the two experiments argue for the existence of distinct processors in the human sentence comprehension mechanism.

Contextual effects on word perception and eye movements during reading

Subjects read passages of text which differed in the extent to which the context constrained or predicted the occurrence of particular target words. In Experiment 1, misspellings were introduced into target words and we examined the extent to which fixation duration and probability of fixating the target word was influenced by contextual constraint and the misspelling. Subjects had a lower probability of fixating the target word in the high-constraint passages than in the low-constraint passages. Furthermore, when subjects did fixate the target, the fixation duration was shorter in the high-constraint passages. In Experiment 2, subjects read passages which included either a predictable target word or a visually similar word which was unpredictable. Fixation durations on the target word were shorter when the predictable word was in the target location than when the unpredictable word was present. The implications of the results for the role of contextual constraint in reading are discussed.

Eye guidance in reading: fixation locations within words.

Three broad categories of models of eye movement guidance in reading are described. According to one category, eye movements in reading are not under stimulus or cognitive control; the other two categories indicate that cognitive activities or stimulus characteristics are involved in eye guidance. In this study a number of descriptive analyses of eye movements in reading were carried out. These analyses dealt with fixation locations on letters within words of various lengths, conditional probabilities that a word will be fixated given that a prior word was or was not fixated, and average saccade length as a function of the length of the word to the right of the fixated word. The results of these analyses were supportive of models which suggest that determining where to look next while reading is made on a nonrandom basis.