Abstract
Reading on a web page is known to be not linear and people need to make fast decisions about whether they have to stop or not reading. In such context, reading, and decision-making processes are intertwined and this experiment attempts to separate them through electrophysiological patterns provided by the Eye-Fixation-Related Potentials technique (EFRPs). We conducted an experiment in which EFRPs were recorded while participants read blocks of text that were semantically highly related, moderately related, and unrelated to a given goal. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether the text was related or not to the semantic goal given at a prior stage. Decision making (stopping information search) may occur when the paragraph is highly related to the goal (positive decision) or when it is unrelated to the goal (negative decision). EFRPs were analyzed on and around typical eye fixations: either on words belonging to the goal (target), subjected to a high rate of positive decisions, or on low frequency unrelated words (incongruent), subjected to a high rate of negative decisions. In both cases, we found EFRPs specific patterns (amplitude peaking between 51 to 120 ms after fixation onset) spreading out on the next words following the goal word and the second fixation after an incongruent word, in parietal and occipital areas. We interpreted these results as delayed late components (P3b and N400), reflecting the decision to stop information searching. Indeed, we show a clear spill-over effect showing that the effect on word N spread out on word N + 1 and N + 2.
Highlights
Seeking information in a newspaper or on a web page, both composed of multiple blocks of text demands that rapid decisions be made about whether to stop the reading of the current block and switch to another one
As regards the decision-making task performed by the participant, moderately related texts were created to introduce a continuum of relatedness to the goal, from unrelated to highly related, in order to maintain both the difficulty of the task and the necessity to read a significant part of the text before making any decision
These results confirm the role of neutrality for the moderately related (MR) texts in the experiment and their intermediate situation between UR and Highly related texts (HR) texts, which are our texts of interest
Summary
Seeking information in a newspaper or on a web page, both composed of multiple blocks of text demands that rapid decisions be made about whether to stop the reading of the current block and switch to another one. People are able to judge from a couple of words whether they found a text relevant or not This involves two concurrent cognitive processes, (1) the word-to-word collection of the necessary and relevant information and, (2) the decision to leave the current block once provided with enough information. Reading and decision-making are processes which intertwine during the search for information. To develop a cognitive model adapted to the search for information, it is necessary to feed it with human variables sensitive to semantic processing and continuously available throughout the progression on the page
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