Abstract
Although eye movements during reading are modulated by cognitive processing demands, they also reflect visual sampling of the input, and possibly preparation of output for speech or the inner voice. By simultaneously recording eye movements and the voice during reading aloud, we obtained an output measure that constrains the length of time spent on cognitive processing. Here we investigate the dynamics of the eye-voice span (EVS), the distance between eye and voice. We show that the EVS is regulated immediately during fixation of a word by either increasing fixation duration or programming a regressive eye movement against the reading direction. EVS size at the beginning of a fixation was positively correlated with the likelihood of regressions and refixations. Regression probability was further increased if the EVS was still large at the end of a fixation: if adjustment of fixation duration did not sufficiently reduce the EVS during a fixation, then a regression rather than a refixation followed with high probability. We further show that the EVS can help understand cognitive influences on fixation duration during reading: in mixed model analyses, the EVS was a stronger predictor of fixation durations than either word frequency or word length. The EVS modulated the influence of several other predictors on single fixation durations (SFDs). For example, word-N frequency effects were larger with a large EVS, especially when word N-1 frequency was low. Finally, a comparison of SFDs during oral and silent reading showed that reading is governed by similar principles in both reading modes, although EVS maintenance and articulatory processing also cause some differences. In summary, the EVS is regulated by adjusting fixation duration and/or by programming a regressive eye movement when the EVS gets too large. Overall, the EVS appears to be directly related to updating of the working memory buffer during reading.
Highlights
The pattern of fixations and saccades during reading is arguably one of the most practiced and fastest motor activities humans routinely perform
The comprehension questions were accurately answered in both reading modes, with mean accuracies of 97.7% for oral and 97.4% for silent reading
Oral reading is considerably slower than silent reading because of the demand to produce intelligible speech
Summary
The pattern of fixations and saccades during reading is arguably one of the most practiced and fastest motor activities humans routinely perform. Eye movements during silent reading are clearly affected by cognitive processing. By measuring the dynamics between eyes and voice during oral reading [i.e., differences between the fixated and pronounced words related to processing difficulty at a given point in time; eye-voice span (EVS)], we obtain information about limits of phonological representations of words in working memory (Inhoff et al, 2004), episodic buffer (Baddeley, 2000), or longterm working memory (Ericsson and Kintsch, 1995), available for cognitive processing of the text. The regulation of the EVS by local processing difficulty may be the most direct measure of limits associated with these constructs It may provide additional constraints for computational models of eye-movement control during reading
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