Abstract
The present eye movements study investigated the optimal viewing position (OVP) and inverted-optimal viewing position (I-OVP) effects in slow readers. The basis of these effects is a phenomenon called corrective re-fixations, which describes a short saccade from a suboptimal landing position (word beginning or end) to the center of the word. The present study found corrective re-fixations in slow readers, which was evident from the I-OVP effects in first fixation durations, the OVP effect in number of fixations and the OVP effect in re-fixation probability. The main result is that slow readers, despite being characterized by a fragmented eye movement pattern during reading, nevertheless share an intact mechanism for performing corrective re-fixations. This correction mechanism is not linked to linguistic processing, but to visual and oculomotor processes, which suggests the integrity of oculomotor and visual processes in slow readers.
Highlights
The initial landing position of the eyes on a word affects the speed of word recognition (e.g., O’Regan and Jacobs, 1992; Hutzler et al, 2008)
A fixation position slightly left to the word center, which is termed as the optimal viewing position (OVP), allows fast word recognition
The initial and second landing position was closer to the word beginnings in the slow readers compared to the fast readers
Summary
The initial landing position of the eyes on a word affects the speed of word recognition (e.g., O’Regan and Jacobs, 1992; Hutzler et al, 2008). Landing on the initial or the final letters of a word increases word processing times (see Figure 1). This is a classical finding from visual word recognition research, which could be replicated in different languages (Finnish: Hyönä and Bertram, 2011; German: Hutzler et al, 2008; French: O’Regan and Jacobs, 1992; Vitu et al, 2007) and different age groups (e.g., Aghababian and Nazir, 2000).
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