Gaze-contingent Window Paradigm Research Articles

Evidence for a reduction of the rightward extent of the perceptual span when reading dynamic horizontally scrolling text.

The dynamic horizontally scrolling text format produces a directional conflict in the allocation of attention for reading, with a necessity to track each word leftward (in the direction of movement) concurrently with normal rightward shifts made to progress through the text (in left-to-right orthographies such as English). The gaze-contingent window paradigm was used to compare the extent of the perceptual span in reading of scrolling and static sentences. Across two experiments, this investigation confirmed that the allocation of attentional resources to the right of fixation was compressed with scrolling text. There was no evidence for a reversal of the direction of asymmetry or a confounding shift of landing position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading direction and the central perceptual span: Evidence from Arabic and English

In English and other alphabetic languages read from left to right, useful information acquired during each fixational pause is generally reported to extend much further to the right of each fixation than to the left. However, the asymmetry of the perceptual span for alphabetic languages read in the opposite direction (i.e., from right to left) has received very little attention in empirical research. Accordingly, we investigated the perceptual span for Arabic, which is one of the world's most widely read languages and is read from right to left, using a gaze-contingent window paradigm in which a region of text was displayed normally around each point of fixation, while text outside this region was obscured. Skilled Arabic readers who were bilingual in Arabic and English read Arabic and English sentences while a window of normal text extended symmetrically 0.5(o) to the left and right of fixation or asymmetrically, by increasing this window to 1.5(o) or 2.5(o) to either the left or the right. When English was read, performance across window conditions was superior when windows extended rightward. However, when Arabic was read, performance was superior when windows extended leftward and was essentially the reverse of that observed for English. These findings show for the first time that a leftward asymmetry in the central perceptual span occurs when Arabic is read and, for the first time in over 30 years, provide a new indication that the perceptual span for alphabetic languages is modified by the overall direction of reading.

Peripheral and parafoveal cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity in a gaze-contingent window paradigm

The present study employed the gaze-contingent window paradigm to investigate parafoveal and peripheral cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity in a triple-conjunction visual search task. In the cueing conditions, the information shown outside the gaze-contingent window was restricted to the feature or feature pair shared between the target and a particular distractor type. In the masking conditions, no stimulus features were shown outside the window. Significant cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity were observed for saccades directed at items within the window, where all features were visible across experimental conditions. Cueing a particular feature or feature pair biased saccadic selectivity towards this feature or feature pair, while masking generally reduced saccadic selectivity. These findings support the concept of visual guidance being a preattentive process that operates in parallel across the display.

Visual Span in Expert Chess Players: Evidence From Eye Movements

The reported research extends classic findings that after briefly viewing structured, but not random, chess positions, chess masters reproduce these positions much more accurately than less-skilled players. Using a combination of the gaze-contingent window paradigm and the change blindness flicker paradigm, we documented dramatically larger visual spans for experts while processing structured, but not random, chess positions. In addition, in a check-detection task, a minimized 3 x 3 chessboard containing a King and potentially checking pieces was displayed. In this task, experts made fewer fixations per trial than less-skilled players, and had a greater proportion of fixations between individual pieces, rather than on pieces. Our results provide strong evidence for a perceptual encoding advantage for experts attributable to chess experience, rather than to a general perceptual or memory superiority.