Week 11-eye movement and reading Flashcards
What does reading require?
Requires different perceptual and cognitive processes combined with knowledge of language and grammar
Define Orthography
The study of word letters and word spelling
Define Phonology
The study of sounds of words and parts of words
Define Semantics
The meaning conveyed by words, phrases and sentences
Define Lexicon
The Language / knowledge –Vocabulary of a person (e.g.,
English)
What is the normal pattern of
eye movements during reading?
*Needs highly detailed (central) vision for accurate perception
of word form
*I.e. needs to make a fixation on (almost) every word
*Makes short saccades between the words
Define saccades
A rapid movement of the eye between fixation points.
Define regression in relation to eye movement
About 10%-25% of eye movements move backwards in the text to reprocess information when we read/misread it (can also be known as regression saccades)
Define foveal vision
Highly detailed central vision
Define parafovea
A region in the retina that circumscribes (restricts) the fovea and is part of the macula lutea.
What’s the oculomotor pattern?
Just a demonstration of how we read a sentence
Define refixation
It’s fixation but the 2nd+ time you go back to the word
Define a return sweep (AKA large regressive saccade)
Return to first part of the text but second line (called a return sweep) only ever make this for the new line of a text if it’s just going back to first sentence that’s called regression
What are some key features of the Oculomotor pattern?
*Fixations ~200ms
*Most words receive at least one direct fixation
*Skips ~20%
*Saccades ~15-40ms, ~5-9 chars
*Mostly progressive ~10-15% regressions
*= average reading speed ~250-350wpm (treatments for blind/deaf people consider reading speed, so important)
What factors can influence EM behaviour?
1.Characteristics of the visual system
2.Attention
3.Online cognitive processing of text e.g., in an exam would pay attention to words longer
4.Personal characteristics
5.Task differences (reading exam vs casual leisurely reading)
6.Text differences
What are the key features of rod cells?
*Lower acuity
*Peripheral retina
*Monochromatic
*Works at lower light intensities
What are the key features of cone cells?
*Better acuity
*Central retina
*Trichromatic (colour vision)
Where is the fovea located?
It’s pit at the back of the eye (which has a higher conc. of cone photoreceptor cells)
True or false: directly looking at
something = high detail
True, the distance goes out to the periphery of the vision + the further out to the side from where you’re looking = much less
detail (so more difficult to identify things)
Visual system: Define visual crowding
Letters compressed with no gaps
Visual system: Explain what is meant by “Greater further into the periphery”
Further into the periphery=loss of spatial resolution (e.g., loss of detail=more pixelated) and greater convergence to other cells
Visual system: What does Bouma’s (1970) graph show?
-shows difficulty distinguishing individual letters (experiment shows visual crowding)
-found letter moved further from central letter to periphery, letters flanked (2 x’s) by other letters, makes it harder to identify middle later so decrease in accuracy due to crowding effect
-further out of periphery=worse resolution so harder determining/identifying word due to visual crowding
What’s the role of attention in reading?
*Mostly deployed to upcoming text (ahead of the point of fixation) to begin processing
*Small allocation behind the fixation
*Single line
Define word identification span
the area where your focused attention is going on and tells us about the area we’re focused enough on to identify words (slightly asymmetric (~4L-7R)– close to
average progressive saccade size (7 characters ahead seen in BCP))