Linguistic and nonlinguistic influences on the eyes' landing positions during reading

Abstract

Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than with regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within-word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and for visually less distinctive upper case text. Furthermore, contrary to previous evidence (Tinker & Paterson, 1939), there is little effect of type case on reading times. Additional analyses of oculomotor behaviour suggest that there is an inverted optimal viewing position for single fixation durations on words. Both the supplementary analyses and the effects of orthography on fixation positions are relevant to current models of eye movements in reading.