Abstract
The process of connected text reading has received very little attention in contemporary cognitive psychology. This lack of attention is in parts due to a research tradition that emphasizes the role of basic lexical constituents, which can be studied in isolated words or sentences. However, this lack of attention is in parts also due to the lack of statistical analysis techniques, which accommodate interdependent time series. In this study, we investigate text reading performance with traditional and nonlinear analysis techniques and show how outcomes from multiple analyses can used to create a more detailed picture of the process of text reading. Specifically, we investigate reading performance of groups of literate adult readers that differ in reading fluency during a self-paced text reading task. Our results indicate that classical metrics of reading (such as word frequency) do not capture text reading very well, and that classical measures of reading fluency (such as average reading time) distinguish relatively poorly between participant groups. Nonlinear analyses of distribution tails and reading time fluctuations provide more fine-grained information about the reading process and reading fluency.
Highlights
The general discussion at the end of the paper will bring together all the information obtained from the analyses and summarize what has been learned about text reading, the reading task, and differences in reading fluency
To illuminate the nature of the changes observed in reading performance, we investigate the relation of lexical variables to reading times
To conclude our analysis of self-paced text reading, we introduce one last analysis of reading dynamics that capitalizes on systematic changes of variance in the reading data over time
Summary
Ethics The study was approved by the institutional review board of the University of Cincinnati (IRB protocol number 07040402E). Procedure After obtaining written consent, participants were asked to read a short story, displayed on a computer monitor (either word-byword, phrase-by-phrase, or sentence-by-sentence, depending on the condition). Participants were informed that merely reading of the story would be sufficient to answer all questions successfully; deliberate memorization of specific parts of the story would be unnecessary. This advice was given to ensure participants were motivated to read, and did not to press the response key [16]. Half of the participants returned for another reading session and were instructed to re-read the same text again
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