In three experiments, subjects’ eye movements were recorded as they read from a computer-controll... more In three experiments, subjects’ eye movements were recorded as they read from a computer-controlled CRT. The amount of information available to the left and right of the fixation point was varied in order to determine the characteristics of the effective visual field in reading. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that readers do not obtain useful information during a fixation more than 3 or 4 letters to the left of their fixation point. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that the effective visual field does not extend any further to the left than the beginning of the word currently fixated, independent of the number of letters available to the left of fixation. When combined with the results of other research on the perceptual span in reading, the results of these experiments indicate that the effective visual field extends from the beginning of the currently fixated word (but no further than 4 characters to the left of fixation) up to about 15 characters to the right of fixation.
Recent research dealing with five issues concerning eye movements in reading is discussed. A summ... more Recent research dealing with five issues concerning eye movements in reading is discussed. A summary is provided of research dealing with (1) the span of effective vision, (2) integration of information across eye movements, (3) where to fixate next, (4) when to move the eyes, and (5) models of eye movement control. It is argued that since word frequency effects are found indpendent of landing position in a word that a model which allows lexical variables to influence when to move the eyes should be favored over one which does not. Finally, research on eye movements during scene perception and visual search is also reviewed. It is argued that the basic mechanisms of eye movement control are similar across tasks (reading, scene perception, and visual search), but that the trigger to move the eyes differs as a function of the specific task.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1983
Subjects read passages of text in which the distance between a pronoun and its antecedent was var... more Subjects read passages of text in which the distance between a pronoun and its antecedent was varied. To complete pronoun assignment, a reader must access and integrate information from another portion of text in order to select an antecedent that matches the pronoun in number and gender. Out data suggest that although this process may be started when the pronoun is encoded, the assignment was not completed on the current fixation when the antecedent occurred some distance back in the text. The implications of the results for pronoun assignment are dicussed as well as the implications for the immediacy of processing.
Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were to... more Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were told to pay special attention to car ads, and the other half were told to pay special attention to skin-care ads. Viewers tended to spend more time looking at the text than the picture part of the ad, though they did spend more time looking at the type of ad they were instructed to pay attention to. Fixation durations and saccade lengths were both longer on the picture part of the ad than the text, but more fixations were made on the text regions. Viewers did not alternate fixations between the text and picture part of the ad, but they tended to read the large print, then the smaller print, and then they looked at the picture (although some viewers did an initial cursory scan of the picture). Implications for (a) how viewers integrate pictorial and textual information and (b) applied research and advertisement development are discussed.
Five categories of models of eye guidance in reading are described. Eye movement data from 10 col... more Five categories of models of eye guidance in reading are described. Eye movement data from 10 college-age readers were analysed. Correlations between the lengths of successive saccades, between the durations of successive fixations, and between successive fixation ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1992
A major issue in reading is the extent to which phonological information is used in visual word p... more A major issue in reading is the extent to which phonological information is used in visual word perception. The present experiments demonstrated that phonological information acquired on 1 fixation from a word in the parafovea is used to help identify that word when it is later fixated. A homophone of a target word, when presented as a preview in the parafovea, facilitated processing of the target word seen on the next fixation more than a preview of a word matched with the homophone in visual similarity to the target word. This facilitation was observed both in the time to name an isolated target word and in the fixation time on the target word while silently reading a sentence; the preview was virtually never consciously identified in either task. Because the visual similarity of the preview to the target also plays a part in the facilitative effect on the preview, however, codes other than phonological codes are preserved across saccades.
A series of experiments was conducted in which a word initially appeared in parafoveal vision, fo... more A series of experiments was conducted in which a word initially appeared in parafoveal vision, followed by the subject's eye movement to the stimulus. During the eye movement, the initially displayed word was replaced by a word which the subject read. Under certain conditions, the prior parafoveal word facilitated naming the foveal word. Three alternative hypotheses were explored concerning the nature of the facilitation. The verbalization hypothesis suggests that information acquired from the parafoveal word permits the subject to begin to form the speech musculature properly for saying the word. The visual features integration hypothesis suggests that visual information obtained from the parafoveal word is integrated with foveal information after the saccade. The preliminary letter identification hypothesis suggests that some abstract code about the letters of the parafoveal word is stored and integrated with information available in the fovea after the saccade. The results of the experiments supported the latter hypothesis in that information about the beginning letters of words was facilitatory in the task. The other two hypotheses were disconfirmed by the results of the experiments.
A visual mask moving in synchrony with the eye obliterated foveal vision during reading under cer... more A visual mask moving in synchrony with the eye obliterated foveal vision during reading under certain conditions. When foveal vision was masked, reading became difficult. In another condition, a window of readable text moved in synchrony with the eye, and parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. The results point out the importance of foveal and parafoveal vision in reading.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1981
A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements... more A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements. The size of the window or mask was varied so that either information in foveal or parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. In another experiment, the onset of the mask was delayed for a certain amount of time following the end of the saccade. The results of the experiments point out the relative importance of foveal and parafoveal vision for reading and further indicate that most of the visual information necessary for reading can be acquired during the first 50 msec that information is available during an eye fixation.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1981
... Inthe cases in which the effect of context wasevaluated in relation to whether or not therewa... more ... Inthe cases in which the effect of context wasevaluated in relation to whether or not therewas ... the probabilities of fixatingon the target word as a function of the levelof context and the ... readers had a lowerprobability of fixating on words when thecontext was highly predictive of the ...
Three broad categories of models of eye movement guidance in reading are described. According to ... more 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 fixed 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.
In three experiments, subjects’ eye movements were recorded as they read from a computer-controll... more In three experiments, subjects’ eye movements were recorded as they read from a computer-controlled CRT. The amount of information available to the left and right of the fixation point was varied in order to determine the characteristics of the effective visual field in reading. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that readers do not obtain useful information during a fixation more than 3 or 4 letters to the left of their fixation point. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that the effective visual field does not extend any further to the left than the beginning of the word currently fixated, independent of the number of letters available to the left of fixation. When combined with the results of other research on the perceptual span in reading, the results of these experiments indicate that the effective visual field extends from the beginning of the currently fixated word (but no further than 4 characters to the left of fixation) up to about 15 characters to the right of fixation.
Recent research dealing with five issues concerning eye movements in reading is discussed. A summ... more Recent research dealing with five issues concerning eye movements in reading is discussed. A summary is provided of research dealing with (1) the span of effective vision, (2) integration of information across eye movements, (3) where to fixate next, (4) when to move the eyes, and (5) models of eye movement control. It is argued that since word frequency effects are found indpendent of landing position in a word that a model which allows lexical variables to influence when to move the eyes should be favored over one which does not. Finally, research on eye movements during scene perception and visual search is also reviewed. It is argued that the basic mechanisms of eye movement control are similar across tasks (reading, scene perception, and visual search), but that the trigger to move the eyes differs as a function of the specific task.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1983
Subjects read passages of text in which the distance between a pronoun and its antecedent was var... more Subjects read passages of text in which the distance between a pronoun and its antecedent was varied. To complete pronoun assignment, a reader must access and integrate information from another portion of text in order to select an antecedent that matches the pronoun in number and gender. Out data suggest that although this process may be started when the pronoun is encoded, the assignment was not completed on the current fixation when the antecedent occurred some distance back in the text. The implications of the results for pronoun assignment are dicussed as well as the implications for the immediacy of processing.
Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were to... more Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were told to pay special attention to car ads, and the other half were told to pay special attention to skin-care ads. Viewers tended to spend more time looking at the text than the picture part of the ad, though they did spend more time looking at the type of ad they were instructed to pay attention to. Fixation durations and saccade lengths were both longer on the picture part of the ad than the text, but more fixations were made on the text regions. Viewers did not alternate fixations between the text and picture part of the ad, but they tended to read the large print, then the smaller print, and then they looked at the picture (although some viewers did an initial cursory scan of the picture). Implications for (a) how viewers integrate pictorial and textual information and (b) applied research and advertisement development are discussed.
Five categories of models of eye guidance in reading are described. Eye movement data from 10 col... more Five categories of models of eye guidance in reading are described. Eye movement data from 10 college-age readers were analysed. Correlations between the lengths of successive saccades, between the durations of successive fixations, and between successive fixation ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1992
A major issue in reading is the extent to which phonological information is used in visual word p... more A major issue in reading is the extent to which phonological information is used in visual word perception. The present experiments demonstrated that phonological information acquired on 1 fixation from a word in the parafovea is used to help identify that word when it is later fixated. A homophone of a target word, when presented as a preview in the parafovea, facilitated processing of the target word seen on the next fixation more than a preview of a word matched with the homophone in visual similarity to the target word. This facilitation was observed both in the time to name an isolated target word and in the fixation time on the target word while silently reading a sentence; the preview was virtually never consciously identified in either task. Because the visual similarity of the preview to the target also plays a part in the facilitative effect on the preview, however, codes other than phonological codes are preserved across saccades.
A series of experiments was conducted in which a word initially appeared in parafoveal vision, fo... more A series of experiments was conducted in which a word initially appeared in parafoveal vision, followed by the subject's eye movement to the stimulus. During the eye movement, the initially displayed word was replaced by a word which the subject read. Under certain conditions, the prior parafoveal word facilitated naming the foveal word. Three alternative hypotheses were explored concerning the nature of the facilitation. The verbalization hypothesis suggests that information acquired from the parafoveal word permits the subject to begin to form the speech musculature properly for saying the word. The visual features integration hypothesis suggests that visual information obtained from the parafoveal word is integrated with foveal information after the saccade. The preliminary letter identification hypothesis suggests that some abstract code about the letters of the parafoveal word is stored and integrated with information available in the fovea after the saccade. The results of the experiments supported the latter hypothesis in that information about the beginning letters of words was facilitatory in the task. The other two hypotheses were disconfirmed by the results of the experiments.
A visual mask moving in synchrony with the eye obliterated foveal vision during reading under cer... more A visual mask moving in synchrony with the eye obliterated foveal vision during reading under certain conditions. When foveal vision was masked, reading became difficult. In another condition, a window of readable text moved in synchrony with the eye, and parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. The results point out the importance of foveal and parafoveal vision in reading.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1981
A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements... more A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements. The size of the window or mask was varied so that either information in foveal or parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. In another experiment, the onset of the mask was delayed for a certain amount of time following the end of the saccade. The results of the experiments point out the relative importance of foveal and parafoveal vision for reading and further indicate that most of the visual information necessary for reading can be acquired during the first 50 msec that information is available during an eye fixation.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1981
... Inthe cases in which the effect of context wasevaluated in relation to whether or not therewa... more ... Inthe cases in which the effect of context wasevaluated in relation to whether or not therewas ... the probabilities of fixatingon the target word as a function of the levelof context and the ... readers had a lowerprobability of fixating on words when thecontext was highly predictive of the ...
Three broad categories of models of eye movement guidance in reading are described. According to ... more 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 fixed 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.
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Papers by Keith Rayner