Eye Movements in Reading: Eye Guidance and Integration

Abstract

Eye guidance in reading and control of fixation durations are discussed and relevant data reviewed. It is concluded that the location of fixations in reading is determined in a nonrandom manner and that fixation durations are affected by cognitive activities occurring during the fixation. Recent experiments on the integration of information across successive saccades are described. These experiments suggest that I) eye movements per se are not necessary for integration since similar patterns of results were obtained when subjects made eye movements and when the saccade was simulated; 2) attentional allocation is tied to the direction of an eye movement; and 2) purely visual information obtained from parafoveal vision is not overlapped with visual information in foveal vision after the saccade. On the basis of the data and experiments reviewed, a tentative processmonitoring view of eye movements in reading is proposed. Saccadic eye movements during reading generally extend about 8 character spaces (or 2 deg of visual angle), while the mean duration of the fixational pauses separating each saccade is 200–250 msec. However, there is a great deal of variability in both these eye movement characteristics so that the range of saccades is often 1 to 20 character spaces and the mean fixation duration is from 100 to over 500 msec (Rayner & McConkie, 1976). Recently, there have been a large number of studies utilizing eye movement data as dependent variables in attempts to understand the reading process (see Rayner, 1978a, for a review.)