scholarly journals The “risky” reading strategy revisited: New simulations using E-Z Reader

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria A McGowan ◽  
Erik D Reichle

Eye-movement studies have demonstrated that, relative to college-aged readers, older readers of alphabetic languages like English and German tend to read more slowly, making more frequent and longer fixations and longer saccades, and skipping more words, but also making more frequent regressions. These findings have led to suggestions that older readers either adopt a “risky” strategy of using context to “guess” words as a way of compensating for slower rates of lexical processing, or have a smaller and more asymmetrical perceptual span. Unfortunately, neither of these hypotheses seemingly explains more recent observations that older readers of Chinese seem to adopt a more “conservative” strategy, making shorter saccades and skipping less often. In this paper, we use the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control to examine several possible accounts of the differences between college-aged and older readers of both alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages. These simulations re-confirm that the “risky” strategy may be sufficient to explain age-related differences in reader’s eye movements, with older readers of English versus Chinese being, respectively, more versus less inclined to guess upcoming words. The implications of these results for aging, reading, and models of eye-movement control are discussed.

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Warren ◽  
Erik D. Reichle ◽  
Nikole D. Patson

The current study investigated how a post-lexical complexity manipulation followed by a lexical complexity manipulation affects eye movements during reading. Both manipulations caused disruption in all measures on the manipulated words, but the patterns of spillover differed. Critically, the effects of the two kinds of manipulations did not interact, and there was no evidence that post-lexical processing difficulty delayed lexical processing on the next word (c.f. Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). This suggests that post-lexical processing of one word and lexical processing of the next can proceed independently and likely in parallel. This finding is consistent with the assumptions of the E-Z Reader model of eye movement control in reading (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009).


2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 934-947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masafumi Ohki ◽  
Hiromasa Kitazawa ◽  
Takahito Hiramatsu ◽  
Kimitake Kaga ◽  
Taiko Kitamura ◽  
...  

The anatomical connection between the frontal eye field and the cerebellar hemispheric lobule VII (H-VII) suggests a potential role of the hemisphere in voluntary eye movement control. To reveal the involvement of the hemisphere in smooth pursuit and saccade control, we made a unilateral lesion around H-VII and examined its effects in three Macaca fuscata that were trained to pursue visually a small target. To the step (3°)-ramp (5–20°/s) target motion, the monkeys usually showed an initial pursuit eye movement at a latency of 80–140 ms and a small catch-up saccade at 140–220 ms that was followed by a postsaccadic pursuit eye movement that roughly matched the ramp target velocity. After unilateral cerebellar hemispheric lesioning, the initial pursuit eye movements were impaired, and the velocities of the postsaccadic pursuit eye movements decreased. The onsets of 5° visually guided saccades to the stationary target were delayed, and their amplitudes showed a tendency of increased trial-to-trial variability but never became hypo- or hypermetric. Similar tendencies were observed in the onsets and amplitudes of catch-up saccades. The adaptation of open-loop smooth pursuit velocity, tested by a step increase in target velocity for a brief period, was impaired. These lesion effects were recognized in all directions, particularly in the ipsiversive direction. A recovery was observed at 4 wk postlesion for some of these lesion effects. These results suggest that the cerebellar hemispheric region around lobule VII is involved in the control of smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 500-512
Author(s):  
Li Zhang ◽  
Guoli Yan ◽  
Li Zhou ◽  
Zebo Lan ◽  
Valerie Benson

Abstract The current study examined eye movement control in autistic (ASD) children. Simple targets were presented in isolation, or with central, parafoveal, or peripheral distractors synchronously. Sixteen children with ASD (47–81 months) and nineteen age and IQ matched typically developing children were instructed to look to the target as accurately and quickly as possible. Both groups showed high proportions (40%) of saccadic errors towards parafoveal and peripheral distractors. For correctly executed eye movements to the targets, centrally presented distractors produced the longest latencies (time taken to initiate eye movements), followed by parafoveal and peripheral distractor conditions. Central distractors had a greater effect in the ASD group, indicating evidence for potential atypical voluntary attentional control in ASD children.


2003 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eyal M. Reingold

It is argued here that a critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without producing any processing effect on the next word. This prediction is explained and illustrated.


1986 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Pollatsek ◽  
Keith Rayner ◽  
David A. Balota

Vision ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Po Chen ◽  
Andreas Stenling ◽  
Liana Machado

Objectives: Ageing is associated with declines in voluntary eye movement control, which negatively impact the performance of daily activities. Therapies treating saccadic eye movement control deficits are currently lacking. To address the need for an effective therapy to treat age-related deficits in saccadic eye movement control, the current study investigated whether saccadic behaviour in older adults can be improved by anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using a montage that has been proven to be effective at improving nonoculomotor control functions. Method: The tDCS protocol entailed a 5 cm × 7 cm anodal electrode and an encephalic cathodal reference electrode positioned over the contralateral supraorbital area. In two experiments, healthy older men completed one active (1.5 mA current for 10 min) and one sham stimulation session, with the session order counterbalanced across participants, and eye movement testing following stimulation. In the first experiment, participants rested during the tDCS (offline), whereas in the follow-up experiment, participants engaged in antisaccades during the tDCS (online). Results: Analyses revealed improvements in saccadic performance following active anodal tDCS relative to sham stimulation in the online experiment, but not in the offline experiment, which was presumably due to the activation of the relevant networks during tDCS promoting more targeted effects. Discussion: These outcomes converge with findings pertaining to nonoculomotor cognitive functions, and provide evidence that tDCS can improve saccadic eye movement control in older adults.


Perception ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Saye

This experiment examined the effects of adding five different kinds of prominent monocular features to a large-disparity random-dot stereogram. It was found that features which enclosed the disparate area produced the shortest initial perception times for fusion. The longer initial perception times for stimuli containing features without this enclosing property are explained in terms of less-helpful guidance of saccadic eye movements prior to the establishment of fusion. Subsequent reductions in perception times for these latter stimuli could be due to perceptual learning within the eye movement control system.


Author(s):  
Syed Hussain Ather

AbstractIn "Slow-fast control of eye movements: an instance of Zeeman’s model for an action," Clement and Akman extended Zeeman's model for the heartbeat to describe eye movement control of different species using aspects of catastrophe theory. The scientists created a model that gives an example of how the techniques of catastrophe theory can be used to understand information processing by biological organisms, a key aspect of biological cybernetics. They tested how well the system of equations for Zeeman's model could be applied to saccadic eye movements.


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