scholarly journals Reading at the speed of speech: Alignment of eye-movement sampling in reading with the speech production rate

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Gagl ◽  
Julius Golch ◽  
Stefan Hawelka ◽  
Jona Sassenhagen ◽  
Klara Gregorova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Amplitude Spectrum ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

AbstractAcross languages, the speech signal is characterized by a predominant modulation of the amplitude spectrum at ~4-5 Hz, reflecting the processing of linguistic information chunks (i.e., syllables or words) approximately every 200 ms. Interestingly, ~200 ms is also the typical duration of eye fixations during reading. Prompted by this observation, we estimated the frequency at which German readers sample text, and demonstrate that they read sentences at a rate of ~5 Hz. We then examined the generality of this finding in a meta-analysis including 14 languages. We replicated the empirical result for German and observed that fixation-based sampling frequencies vary across languages between 3.9 and 5.2 Hz. Remarkably, we identified a systematic rate reduction from easy to difficult writing systems. Finally, we directly investigated in a new experiment the association between speech spectrum and eye-movement sampling frequency at a person-specific level and found a significant correlation. Based on this evidence, we argue that during reading, the rate of our eye movements is tuned to supply information to language comprehension processes at a preferred rate, coincident with the typical rate of speech.Significance StatementAcross languages, speech is produced and perceived at a rate of ~4-5Hz. When listening to speech, our brain capitalizes this temporal structure to segment speech. We show empirically that while reading our eyes sample text at the same rate, and generalize this finding in a meta-analysis to 14 languages. Reading rates vary between 3.9 and 5.2Hz – i.e., within the typical range of the speech signal. We demonstrate that the difficulty of writing systems underpins this variance. Lastly, we also demonstrate that the speech rate between persons is correlated with the rate at which their eyes sample text. The speech rate of spoken language appears to act as a driving force for the voluntary control of eye movements during reading.

Age Differences in Eye Movements During Reading: Degenerative Problems or Compensatory Strategy?

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-311
Author(s):  
José David Moreno ◽  
José A. León ◽  
Lorena A. M. Arnal ◽  
Juan Botella
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Aging Effects ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

Abstract. We report the results of a meta-analysis of 22 experiments comparing the eye movement data obtained from young ( Mage = 21 years) and old ( Mage = 73 years) readers. The data included six eye movement measures (mean gaze duration, mean fixation duration, total sentence reading time, mean number of fixations, mean number of regressions, and mean length of progressive saccade eye movements). Estimates were obtained of the typified mean difference, d, between the age groups in all six measures. The results showed positive combined effect size estimates in favor of the young adult group (between 0.54 and 3.66 in all measures), although the difference for the mean number of fixations was not significant. Young adults make in a systematic way, shorter gazes, fewer regressions, and shorter saccadic movements during reading than older adults, and they also read faster. The meta-analysis results confirm statistically the most common patterns observed in previous research; therefore, eye movements seem to be a useful tool to measure behavioral changes due to the aging process. Moreover, these results do not allow us to discard either of the two main hypotheses assessed for explaining the observed aging effects, namely neural degenerative problems and the adoption of compensatory strategies.

Using Eye Movements to Study Reading Processes

2017 ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne E. Cook ◽  
Wei Wei
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Reading Processes ◽  
Reading Measures ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

This chapter provides an overview of eye movement-based reading measures and the types of inferences that may be drawn from each. We provide logistical advice about how to set up stimuli for eye tracking experiments, with different level processes (word, sentence, and discourse) and commonly employed measures of eye movements during reading in mind. We conclude with examples from our own research of studies of eye movements during reading at the word, sentence, and discourse levels, as well as some considerations for future research.

The time-course of morphological constraints

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Cunnings ◽  
Harald Clahsen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
General Constraint ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

The avoidance of regular but not irregular plurals inside compounds (e.g., *rats eater vs. mice eater) has been one of the most widely studied morphological phenomena in the psycholinguistics literature. To examine whether the constraints that are responsible for this contrast have any general significance beyond compounding, we investigated derived word forms containing regular and irregular plurals in two experiments. Experiment 1 was an offline acceptability judgment task, and Experiment 2 measured eye movements during reading derived words containing regular and irregular plurals and uninflected base nouns. The results from both experiments show that the constraint against regular plurals inside compounds generalizes to derived words. We argue that this constraint cannot be reduced to phonological properties, but is instead morphological in nature. The eye-movement data provide detailed information on the time-course of processing derived word forms indicating that early stages of processing are affected by a general constraint that disallows inflected words from feeding derivational processes, and that the more specific constraint against regular plurals comes in at a subsequent later stage of processing. We argue that these results are consistent with stage-based models of language processing.

The processing of blend words in naming and sentence reading

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 847-857
Author(s):  
Rebecca L Johnson ◽  
Sarah Rose Slate ◽  
Allison R Teevan ◽  
Barbara J Juhasz
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Naming Task ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
Processing Times ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
Word Familiarity ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

Research exploring the processing of morphologically complex words, such as compound words, has found that they are decomposed into their constituent parts during processing. Although much is known about the processing of compound words, very little is known about the processing of lexicalised blend words, which are created from parts of two words, often with phoneme overlap (e.g., brunch). In the current study, blends were matched with non-blend words on a variety of lexical characteristics, and blend processing was examined using two tasks: a naming task and an eye-tracking task that recorded eye movements during reading. Results showed that blend words were processed more slowly than non-blend control words in both tasks. Blend words led to longer reaction times in naming and longer processing times on several eye movement measures compared to non-blend words. This was especially true for blends that were long, rated low in word familiarity, but were easily recognisable as blends.

Dodge-Ing the Issue: Dodge, Javal, Hering, and the Measurement of Saccades in Eye-Movement Research

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3470 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 793-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J Wade ◽  
Benjamin W Tatler ◽  
Dieter Heller
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Eye Position ◽  
Type I ◽  
Rapid Eye Movements ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Discontinuous Nature ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

Dodge, in 1916, suggested that the French term ‘saccade’ should be used for describing the rapid movements of the eyes that occur while reading. Previously he had referred to these as type I movements. Javal had used the term ‘saccade’ in 1879, when describing experiments conducted in his laboratory by Lamare. Accordingly, Javal has been rightly credited with assigning the term to rapid eye movements. In English these rapid rotations had been called jerks, and they had been observed and measured before Lamare's studies of reading. Rapid sweeps of the eyes occur as one phase of nystagmus; they were observed by Wells in 1792 who used an afterimage technique, and they were illustrated by Crum Brown in 1878. Afterimages were used in nineteenth-century research on eye movements and eye position; they were also employed by Hering in 1879, to ascertain how the eyes moved during reading. In the previous year, Javal had employed afterimages in his investigations of reading, but this was to demonstrate that the eyes moved horizontally rather than vertically. Hering's and Lamare's auditory method established the discontinuous nature of eye movements during reading, and the photographic methods introduced by Dodge and others in the early twentieth century enabled their characteristics to be determined with greater accuracy.

scholarly journals Effects of word predictability on eye movements during Arabic reading

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam A. AlJassmi ◽  
Kayleigh L. Warrington ◽  
Victoria A. McGowan ◽  
Sarah J. White ◽  
Kevin B. Paterson
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Morphological Characteristics ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Eye Fixations ◽  
Varying Length ◽  
Word Predictability ◽  
Word Skipping ◽  
Alphabetic Writing

AbstractContextual predictability influences both the probability and duration of eye fixations on words when reading Latinate alphabetic scripts like English and German. However, it is unknown whether word predictability influences eye movements in reading similarly for Semitic languages like Arabic, which are alphabetic languages with very different visual and linguistic characteristics. Such knowledge is nevertheless important for establishing the generality of mechanisms of eye-movement control across different alphabetic writing systems. Accordingly, we investigated word predictability effects in Arabic in two eye-movement experiments. Both produced shorter fixation times for words with high compared to low predictability, consistent with previous findings. Predictability did not influence skipping probabilities for (four- to eight-letter) words of varying length and morphological complexity (Experiment 1). However, it did for short (three- to four-letter) words with simpler structures (Experiment 2). We suggest that word-skipping is reduced, and affected less by contextual predictability, in Arabic compared to Latinate alphabetic reading, because of specific orthographic and morphological characteristics of the Arabic script.

scholarly journals Lexical and post-lexical complexity effects on eye movements in reading

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Warren ◽  
Erik D. Reichle ◽  
Nikole D. Patson
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Eye Movement Control ◽  
Lexical Complexity ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading ◽  
Processing Difficulty

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).

Meta-Analysis of Eye Movements Between Children With and Without Dyslexia or Reading Disability

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-24
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Reading Disability ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Fixation Duration ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Eligibility Criteria

Background: Hundreds of studies have compared eye movement variables in subjects with and without dyslexia or reading disability. Most studied only small sample sizes and the eye movement tasks and targets varied. The aims of this study are to determine which, if any, eye movement variable(s) differ between children with and without dyslexia or reading disability, and, if differences are found, quantify the amount. Methods: Search engines PubMed and Salus/EBSCO Discover Database for key words eye movements OR saccades OR fixation AND dyslexia OR reading disability yielded 728 titles. Following initial study eligibility criteria (objective eye movement variable measures of children age 6-15.5 years in defined case and control groups), 43 studies qualified for in depth review. Eleven studies qualified for data synthesis. Data were extracted, tested for normality by Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, standardized, weighted by sample size, tested for homogeneity by Q test, pooled and measured for combined effect. Results: Combined relative risk effect revealed fixation duration, number of fixations, and number of regressions when reading words to be 2.33 (95% CI: 2.12-2.54) times longer, 1.58 (95% CI: 1.52-1.65) times higher, and 1.83 (95% CI: 1.68-1.97) times higher respectively in children with dyslexia or reading disability compared to age normal readers. Differences reading pseudowords were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Significant differences in fixation duration, number of fixations, and number of regressions were found during word reading. Because most reading time is during the fixation duration, children with dyslexia or reading disability need, on average, 2.33 times longer. The results provide objective data to support reading time accommodations for Individual Education Plans. Systematic review suggests that oculomotility ability depends on the amount of cognitive processing rather than purely on extra ocular muscle control.

scholarly journals The modulation of reading strategies by language opacity in early bilinguals: an eye movement study

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIEGO DE LEÓN RODRÍGUEZ ◽  
KARIN A. BUETLER ◽  
NOËMI EGGENBERGER ◽  
BASIL C. PREISIG ◽  
RAHEL SCHUMACHER ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
French Language ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Brain Process ◽  
Movement Study ◽  
French Words ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading

Converging evidences from eye movement experiments indicate that linguistic contexts influence reading strategies. However, the question of whether different linguistic contexts modulate eye movements during reading in the same bilingual individuals remains unresolved. We examined reading strategies in a transparent (German) and an opaque (French) language of early, highly proficient French–German bilinguals: participants read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words while the First Fixation Location (FFL), its duration and latency were measured. Since transparent linguistic contexts and pseudo-words would favour a direct grapheme/phoneme conversion, the reading strategy should be more local for German than for French words (FFL closer to the beginning) and no difference is expected in pseudo-words’ FFL between contexts. Our results confirm these hypotheses, providing the first evidence that the same individuals engage different reading strategy depending on language opacity, suggesting that a given brain process can be modulated by a given context.

scholarly journals Effects of Normative Aging on Eye Movements during Reading

Vision ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin B. Paterson ◽  
Victoria A. McGowan ◽  
Kayleigh L. Warrington ◽  
Lin Li ◽  
Sha Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Aging Effects ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Substantial Progress ◽  
Normative Aging ◽  
Eye Movements During Reading ◽  
Made In

Substantial progress has been made in understanding the mostly detrimental effects of normative aging on eye movements during reading. This article provides a review of research on aging effects on eye movements during reading for different writing systems (i.e., alphabetic systems like English compared to non-alphabetic systems like Chinese), focused on appraising the importance of visual and cognitive factors, considering key methodological issues, and identifying vital questions that need to be addressed and topics for further investigation.

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