TY - JOUR
T1 - Saccade generation during reading
T2 - Are words necessary?
AU - Yang, S. N.
AU - McConkie, G. W.
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to S. N. Yang, Beckman Inst., University of Illinois, 405 n. Matthews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA. Email: syang3@brain.riken.go.jp This research was supported by a grant from the Research Board of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, by a Beckman Graduate Fellowship to the first author and by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9624396. Gary Wolverton did the computer programming that made the research possible.
PY - 2004/1/1
Y1 - 2004/1/1
N2 - Most current theories of eye movement control during reading are word based in multiple ways: They assume that saccade onset times result from word-based processes, and that words are involved in selecting a saccade target. In the current study the role of words was examined by occasionally replacing the text with one of five alternate stimulus patterns for a single fixation during reading, and observing the effects on the time, direction, and length of the saccade that ends that fixation. The onset times of many saccades are unaffected by replacing spaces with random letters, thus removing visible word-units; also, the effects of this removal on saccade length is not different than that of having space-delimited nonwords. It does not appear that words play a critical role in generating saccades. The results are compatible with the Competition/Interaction theory of eye movement control during reading (Yang & McConkie, 2001).
AB - Most current theories of eye movement control during reading are word based in multiple ways: They assume that saccade onset times result from word-based processes, and that words are involved in selecting a saccade target. In the current study the role of words was examined by occasionally replacing the text with one of five alternate stimulus patterns for a single fixation during reading, and observing the effects on the time, direction, and length of the saccade that ends that fixation. The onset times of many saccades are unaffected by replacing spaces with random letters, thus removing visible word-units; also, the effects of this removal on saccade length is not different than that of having space-delimited nonwords. It does not appear that words play a critical role in generating saccades. The results are compatible with the Competition/Interaction theory of eye movement control during reading (Yang & McConkie, 2001).
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U2 - 10.1080/09541440340000231
DO - 10.1080/09541440340000231
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:1642458351
VL - 16
SP - 226
EP - 261
JO - Journal of Cognitive Psychology
JF - Journal of Cognitive Psychology
SN - 2044-5911
IS - 1-2
ER -