Eye Movement Study Research Articles

Aging and word predictability during reading: Evidence from eye movements and fixation-related potentials.

The use of context to facilitate the processing of words is recognized as a hallmark of skilled reading. This capability is also hypothesized to change with older age because of cognitive changes across the lifespan. However, research investigating this issue using eye movements or event-related potentials (ERPs) has produced conflicting findings. Specifically, whereas eye-movement studies report larger context effects for older than younger adults, ERP findings suggest that context effects are diminished or delayed for older readers. Crucially, these contrary findings may reflect methodological differences, including use of unnatural sentence displays in ERP research. To address these limitations, we used a coregistration technique to record eye movements (EMs) and fixation-related potentials (FRPs) simultaneously while 44 young adults (18-30 years) and 30 older adults (65+ years) read sentences containing a target word that was strongly or weakly predicted by prior context. Eye-movement analyses were conducted over all data (full EM dataset) and only data matching FRPs. FRPs were analysed to capture early and later components 70-900 ms following fixation-onset on target words. Both eye-movement datasets and early FRPs showed main effects of age group and context, while the full EM dataset and later FRPs revealed larger context effects for older adults. We argue that, by using coregistration methods to address limitations of earlier ERP research, our experiment provides compelling complementary evidence from eye movements and FRPs that older adults rely more on context to integrate words during reading.

The interference effect of low-relevant animated elements on digital picturebook comprehension in preschoolers: An eye-movement study.

Digital picture-book (DPB) with animated elements can enhance children's engagement, but irrelevant animations may interfere with their comprehension. To determine the effect of the relevance of animated elements on preschoolers' comprehension, an experimental study was conducted. Thirtythree preschoolers between the aged 4-5 years engaged with DPB in three conditions: high- and lowrelevant animations and a static control while listening to the story; their eye movements were recorded simultaneously. The study found that preschoolers had lower comprehension when exposed to low-relevant animation, but had comparable scores to the static condition with high-relevant animation. The results of eye-movement analysis showed that children who focused less on highrelevant or more on low-relevant elements had poorer comprehension. Those exposed to low-relevant animations looked less at high-relevant elements and more at low-relevant elements than those in the static and high-relevant conditions. These results suggested that low-relevant animations in DPB interfered with children's comprehension by directing their visual attention away from crucial, highrelevant elements and more to less relevant elements. Therefore, designers creating DPBs, as well as parents and caregivers selecting DPBs for children, should consider the importance of the relevance of animated elements. And the corresponding mechanism of animation effect in DPB comprehension was discussed.

The focus effect of sentence comprehension in natural reading of Chinese and English: a meta-analysis based on eye movement studies

The focus effect of sentence comprehension in natural reading of Chinese and English: a meta-analysis based on eye movement studies

Lasting Deficiencies in Vergence Eye Movements in Patients with Peripheral or Central Vertigo: Improvements After Four Sessions of REMOBI Neurotraining and Associated Functional Benefits.

The vestibular function is in synergism with the oculomotor vergence. Vertigo may be related to vergence disorders and conversely, vestibular pathologies may affect vergence. To consolidate this hypothesis, we conducted a study at the vestibular orthoptic clinic of the Bastogne Hospital. Fourteen patients with vertigo history appearing 2 weeks to 8 years ago, aged 30 to 65 years were studied; at the moment of the eye movement study, no patient had acute attack of vertigo. The origin of vertigo varied (Meniere's disease, organic pathology, sensitivity to visual movement). An assessment with objective measurement of vergence (single-step protocol) was carried out with the REMOBI technology coupled with binocular video-oculography in sitting and standing positions. Four neuro-rehabilitation sessions of vergence eye movements were performed with the double-step in-depth protocol, alternating sitting and standing positions to involve different postural and vestibular functions. An assessment of vergence was done again 1 to 2 months later. The initial assessment revealed problems of magnitude and/or speed or variability of vergence for 11 of the patients relative to controls (published by the group in previous studies). After neuro-rehabilitation, an improvement was observed in eight patients. Patients reported a clear improvement of their self confidence in moving in the space. Posture measures done before rehabilitation comparing eyes fixating or closed or while making near-far vergence eye movements indicated lower medio-lateral acceleration when doing vergence eye movements in patients with vertigo history of functional origin. The results are in favor of the hypothesis of a symbiosis between vergence and vestibular function and the interest of diagnosis and rehabilitation of the vergence disorder in patients with vertigo history in the absence of acute vertigo attack.

Working memory capacity prevents pilots' loss of situation awareness in distraction scenarios——An eye-movement study

Numerous flight accidents have been attributed to pilots' lack of situation awareness (SA), with distraction being a significant contributing factor. Therefore, identifying factors that may protect pilots' SA under distraction conditions and explore their mechanisms is crucial for promoting aviation safety. This study empirically investigates the effects of individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) on pilots' SA when performing secondary tasks. The pilots were divided into two groups based on their performance on the WMC test and were asked to complete a simulated cockpit monitoring task under three secondary task difficulty conditions (no task, low-difficulty task, and high-difficulty task). SA in the simulated monitoring tasks was measured using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT), and eye movement data were collected to analyze visual behaviors and attention allocation. Results showed that the difficulty of secondary task significantly impacted overall SA, the perceptual level of SA and dwell times; however, secondary task difficulty did not affect the perceptual level of SA in pilots with high WMC. These results suggest that WMC protects pilots' perceptual level SA when they perform secondary tasks. This study provides additional insights into the mechanisms of working memory in protecting SA and offers theoretical guidance for the design of complex technical systems and pilot psychological selection, which can help promote aviation safety.

Remembrances of Paul Locher

Paul Locher passed away on 20 August 2024. Paul was an outstanding scientist and a central figure in the field of empirical aesthetics. He made important contributions to numerous areas including the study of symmetry, balance, facial attractiveness, museum behaviour, artwork composition and restoration, and aesthetics of food, but in particular to the study of eye movements in aesthetic appreciation of artworks. Indeed, his research on eye tracking is a touchstone for visual perception in empirical aesthetics. Here, a group of Paul's colleagues remember and celebrate him through a set of recollections that honour how he shaped their research and lives. It is hoped that this will offer a glimpse into the wonderful scholar and human being that Paul was, and why he will be sorely missed.

Metalinguistic explanations and their impact on incidental grammar acquisition: An eye-movement study

Recent research highlights the value of metalinguistic explanations in facilitating second language (L2) grammar acquisition. Nevertheless, a notable research gap persists regarding how these explanations influence incidental grammar acquisition and their impact on overall reading processes and comprehension. Furthermore, whether the potentially positive effects of metalinguistic explanations transfer to the acquisition of subsequent constructions without explicit guidance is an unexplored domain. This study addresses these research gaps by recruiting 42 Korean undergraduate students and assigning them to the metalinguistic or baseline groups. The metalinguistic group read an English text supplemented with bottom-margin metalinguistic explanations, which elucidated the first half of the target grammar (without explanations for the second half), whereas the baseline group read the same text without explanations. This study used eye-tracking technology to register participants’ eye movements during reading, followed by an announced reading comprehension test and an unannounced error correction test. Statistical analyses using linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) and t-tests revealed that metalinguistic explanations significantly enhanced incidental grammar acquisition in L2 learners without compromising overall reading processes and comprehension. However, the benefits of metalinguistic explanations in the metalinguistic group failed to extend to the incidental learning of other unexplained constructions.

Attentional Switching in Infants as a Function of Birth Experience: An Eye Movement Study

Attentional Switching in Infants as a Function of Birth Experience: An Eye Movement Study

Processing causal structure sentences in Mandarin Chinese: an eye movements study.

It remains uncertain whether causal structure prediction can improve comprehension in Chinese sentences and whether the position of the headword mediates the prediction effect. We conducted an experiment to explore the effect of causal prediction and headword position in Chinese sentence reading. Participants were asked to read sentences containing causal connectives with their eye movements recorded. In the experiment, we manipulated the causal structure of the sentence and the position of the headword. We found a promoting effect of causal structure on first-pass reading time and a hindering impact on total reading time. However, the effect was not mediated by the headword position. The results show that causal syntactic prediction facilitated early-stage processing and increased the integration cost in the late stage of Chinese sentence processing. These findings also support the constraint-based approach, which suggests an isolation between semantic and syntactic processing.

How does background knowledge affect second language reading? An eye movement study

AbstractThere is broad consensus that a reader's background knowledge on a reading topic affects both their reading processes and comprehension in their first language and also in a second language. However, it is unclear whether a reader's background knowledge specifically affects reading comprehension accuracy and reading rate. The extent to which background knowledge facilitates second language reading when compared to a reader's L2 linguistic knowledge is also unclear. Moreover, the mental process accounting for the interaction between general background knowledge, type of linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary or writing system, and L2 reading abilities also need to be identified. Using texts in Mandarin Chinese, this paper investigates these problems with an eye‐movement study administered to 40 L2 Chinese learners with Indo‐European L1s. Results illustrate that an L2 reader's background knowledge about the text can positively impact both their reading comprehension and reading rate; however, the influence on the latter could be topic‐dependent. In more challenging topics, the contribution of background knowledge to reading comprehension could outweigh any single type of linguistic knowledge, even if the target language uses a more cognitively demanding writing system. The connectionist account proposed by the construction–integration theory is suggested to be currently the best theoretical explanation for the mental process behind developing second‐language reading abilities. Pedagogical implications are also considered based on these findings.

Analysis of Research Hotspots and Trends in Autism Eye Movement Studies Based on CiteSpace Software

The analysis of hot spots and trends in autism eye movement research is of great significance to the further development of autism research. This paper uses 915 valid documents screened from the Web of Science Core Collection database as a sample, and uses CiteSpace 6.1R6 software to analyze the hot spots and future research trends of autism eye movement research from 2008 to 2023. The study shows that in recent years, the research in this field has generally shown an upward trend, but it has shown a downward trend after reaching a peak in 2021; the cooperation between authors needs to be strengthened; each cluster in this field has a relatively clear research theme, and the keywords contained in the cluster are closely related; the latest research hotspot is artistic features (autistic trait).

A behavioral and eye movement study on inhibitory processing of action memory

Recent evidence highlights the critical role of effective interference inhibition for optimal memory performance, yet its function in action memory remains relatively underexplored. The current study investigated inhibitory processes in action memory during encoding and storage stages. In Experiment 1, 100 participants were divided into high and low cognitive inhibition groups using the Stroop color naming task. They performed either a subject-performed task (SPT) or a verbal task (VT) under varying semantic interference levels to assess the interaction between individual inhibitory abilities and the inhibition processing of action memory during encoding. Results indicated no significant difference in inhibition effects (IF) between high and low inhibition groups in SPT under high semantic interference, while in VT, those with high cognitive inhibition demonstrated significantly greater IF than those with low. Experiment 2, involving 57 participants, employed a point detection task and eye-tracking to explore attentional inhibition mechanisms during action memory storage. Behavioral results showed greater IF for SPT than VT under semantic interference. Eye-tracking revealed higher initial fixation rates and shorter durations for SPT subjects during the early processing stage, and significantly fewer and shorter fixations in the later stage compared to VT subjects. These findings imply stronger inhibitory processing in SPT during both encoding and storage stages under semantic interference, with attentional inhibition of action memories occurring predominantly in the later stage.

Exploring the impact of autistic traits and anxiety on visual attentional response to angry faces in adults with high autistic traits: An eye-movement study

This study investigated the impact of autistic traits and anxiety on the visual attentional response to angry faces among individuals with varying levels of autistic traits in the general population. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, eye-tracking methodology was used to compare 26 participants with high autistic traits to 26 individuals with low autistic traits. The latency of the first fixation on images of angry faces, neutral faces, and objects during a free viewing task was measured. Anxiety levels were assessed using the Self-rating Anxiety Scale. Experiment 2 utilized an overlap task to examine attentional response patterns toward angry faces in individuals with high and low autistic traits. The findings revealed that participants with high autistic traits displayed a longer latency to first fixation on angry faces during the free-viewing task compared to those with low autistic traits. However, no significant differences were observed for neutral faces and objects. In the overlap task, the group with high autistic traits demonstrated a significantly prolonged latency to first fixation on angry faces in peripheral positions when the central stimulus was a neutral face and the peripheral stimulus was an angry face, relative to the group with low autistic traits. Importantly, when taking anxiety traits into account as a covariate in both experiments, the previously observed group effects no longer remained significant. These results were discussed within the frameworks of social motivation theory and the autism continuum hypothesis.

Bilingual parafoveal processing: Children and adults preprocess orthographic information of the upcoming word during sentence reading in their first and second language.

Readers of different ages and across different languages routinely process information of upcoming words in a sentence, before their eyes move to fixate them directly (parafoveal processing). However, there is inconsistent evidence of similar parafoveal processing in a reader's second language (L2). In this eye movement study, the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975a) was used to test whether parafoveal processing of orthographic information is an integral part of both beginning and proficient L2 reading. The eye movements of beginning L2-learners (n = 53, aged 11-14 years) and highly proficient L2-users (n = 56, aged 19-65 years) were recorded while they read sentences in their first language (L1) German and L2 English. Sentences each contained a cognate target word (e.g., English: tunnel, German: Tunnel). The parafoveal preview of the targets either (a) preserved the spelling and meaning of the target (identity condition), (b) preserved letter identities but transposed the position of two adjacent letters (transposed-letter [TL] condition, e.g., tunenl/Tunenl), or substituted the identity of two adjacent letters (substituted-letter condition, e.g., tunocl/Tunocl). TL previews elicited longer early first-pass reading times than identity previews in both L1 and L2 reading in children and adults, suggesting that letter position was processed parafoveally. Substituted-letter previews resulted in longer reading times than TL previews in children and adults in L1 and L2, suggesting that letter identity information was processed independently of position information. These results suggest that letter position and identity information are extracted from the parafovea during L1 and L2 reading, facilitating word recognition in children and adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of question previewing on response accuracy and text processing: An eye-movement study

The present study investigated the impact of manipulating reading strategies (i.e., reading the questions first [QF] or reading the passage first [PF]) during a reading comprehension test where we explored how reading strategy was related to student characteristics (i.e., reading achievement and working memory capacity). Participants' eye movements were monitored as they read 12 passages and answered multiple-choice questions. We examined differences in (a) response accuracy, (b) average total time on words in the text, (c) total task reading time, and (d) time reading text relevant to questions as a function of PF and QF strategies. Analyses were conducted to examine whether findings varied as a function of student characteristics (i.e., reading achievement and working memory capacity) and grade level (Grades 3, 5, and 8). Several interesting findings emerged from our study, including a limited effect of reading strategy use on response accuracy, with only eighth graders demonstrating better accuracy in the QF condition, and several demonstrations of PF leading to more efficient test-taking processes, including (a) longer average total reading times on words in the passage in the PF condition that could be associated with creating a better mental model of the text, (b) often being associated with less total-task time, and (c) being associated with more successful search strategies. Implications for providing teachers and students with strategies are discussed.

Processing difficulty while reading words with neighbors is not due to increased foveal load: Evidence from eye movements.

Words with high orthographic relatedness are termed "word neighbors" (angle/angel; birch/birth). Activation-based models of word recognition assume that lateral inhibition occurs between words and their activated neighbors. However, studies of eye movements during reading have not found inhibitory effects in early measures assumed to reflect lexical access (e.g., gaze duration). Instead, inhibition in eye-movement studies has been found in later measures of processing (e.g., total time, regressions in). We conducted an eye-movement boundary change study (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7(1), 65-81, 1975) that manipulated the parafoveal preview of the word following the neighbor word (word N+1). In this way, we explored whether the late inhibitory effects seen with transposed letter words and words with higher-frequency neighbors result from reduced parafoveal preview due to increased foveal load and/or interference during late stages of lexical processing (the L2 stage within the E-Z Reader framework). For word N+1, while there were clear preview effects, there was not an effect of the neighborhood status of word N, nor a significant interaction. This suggests that the late inhibitory effects of earlier eye-movement studies are driven by misidentification of neighbor words rather than being due to increased foveal load.

A longitudinal eye-movement study of text-diagram integrative processing during multimedia reading among upper elementary children

A longitudinal eye-movement study of text-diagram integrative processing during multimedia reading among upper elementary children

Research Progress of Eye Movement Analyses and its Detection Algorithms in Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been considered one of the most challenging forms of dementia. The earlier the people are diagnosed with AD, the easier it is for doctors to find a treatment. Based on the previous literature summarizing the research results on the relationship between eye movement and AD before 2013, this paper reviewed 34 original eye movements research papers only closely related to AD published in the past ten years and pointed out that the prosaccade (4 papers) and antisaccade (5 papers) tasks, reading tasks (3 papers), visual search tasks (3 papers) are still the research objects of many researchers, Some researchers have looked at King-Devick tasks (2 papers), reading tasks (3 papers) and special tasks (8 papers), and began to use combinations of different saccade tasks to detect the relationship between eye movement and AD, which had not been done before. These reflect the diversity of eye movement tasks and the complexity and difficulty of the relationship between eye movement and AD. On this basis, the current processing and analysis methods of eye movement datasets are analyzed and discussed in detail, and we note that certain key data that may be especially important for the early diagnosis of AD by using eye movement studies cannot be miss-classified as noise and removed. Finally, we note that the development of methods that can accurately denoise and classify and quickly process massive eye movement data is quite significant for detecting eye movements in early diagnosis of AD.

Parafoveal and foveal N400 effects in natural reading: A timeline of semantic processing from fixation-related potentials.

The depth at which parafoveal words are processed during reading is an ongoing topic of debate. Recent studies using RSVP-with-flanker paradigms have shown that implausible words within sentences elicit an N400 component while they are still in parafoveal vision, suggesting that the semantics of parafoveal words can be accessed to rapidly update the sentence representation. To study this effect in natural reading, we combined the coregistration of eye movements and EEG with the deconvolution modeling of fixation-related potentials (FRPs) to test whether semantic plausibility is processed parafoveally during Chinese sentence reading. For one target word per sentence, both its parafoveal and foveal plausibility were orthogonally manipulated using the boundary paradigm. Consistent with previous eye movement studies, we observed a delayed effect of parafoveal plausibility on fixation durations that only emerged on the foveal word. Crucially, in FRPs aligned to the pretarget fixation, a clear N400 effect emerged already based on parafoveal plausibility, with more negative voltages for implausible previews. Once participants fixated the target, we again observed an N400 effect of foveal plausibility. Interestingly, this foveal N400 was absent whenever the preview had been implausible, indicating that when a word's (im)plausibility is already processed in parafoveal vision, this information is not revised anymore upon direct fixation. Implausible words also elicited a late positive component (LPC), but exclusively when in foveal vision. Our results not only provide convergent neural and behavioral evidence for the parafoveal uptake of semantic information, but also indicate different contributions of parafoveal versus foveal information toward higher level sentence processing.

Looking for immediate and downstream evidence of lexical prediction in eye movements during reading.

Previous investigations of whether readers make predictions about the full identity of upcoming words have focused on the extent to which there are processing consequences when readers encounter linguistic input that is incompatible with their expectations. To date, eye-movement studies have revealed inconsistent evidence of the processing costs that would be expected to accompany lexical prediction. This study investigated whether readers' lexical predictions were observable during or downstream from their initial point of activation. Three experiments assessed readers' eye movements to predictable and unpredictable words, and then to subsequent downstream words, which probed the lingering activation of previously expected words. The results showed novel evidence of processing costs for unexpected input but only when supported by a plausible linguistic environment, suggesting that readers could strategically modulate their predictive processing. However, there was limited evidence that their lexical predictions affected downstream processing. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of prediction in language processing are discussed.