Chapter 6 - Word Skipping: Implications for Theories of Eye Movement Control in Reading

Abstract

This chapter explores theories of eye movement control in reading. Eye movements during reading are characterized by short periods of steadiness (fixations), followed by fast movements (saccades). Saccades bring new information into the centre of the visual field where acuity is best; fixations are required to recognize words. If the central (foveal) word is identified during a fixation, one is led erroneously to believe that eye movements essentially consist of word-to-word movements. In fact, such simple sequence of motion is rarely observed in practical data. Findings reveal, some words are fixated more than once, some are initially not fixated but immediately afterwards regressed to, and some are not fixated at all. Since eye movements were scientifically calibrated during the process of reading, it has emerged that more than one third of the words are initially skipped during reading. The study shows evidence for oculomotor, visual, and linguistic influences on word skipping. A model of word skipping that is based on visual characteristics of the text shows skipping patterns based on “word length”. Evidence strongly points to the conclusion that short words are skipped more often because they are short and not because they are easy.