The effects of spatial manipulation on eye movement when subjects either read or searched through paragraphs were examined. Adults, third, and fifth graders were presented with paragraphs which were typed normally or in alternating case (upper and lower). The spacing between the words was either normal, filled, or absent. The results show that approximately twice as many character spaces are processed during search as during reading. Subjects made more fixations of shorter duration during search than reading. The data indicated that the ability to vary the size of the perceptual unit develops with experience. When spatial cues were unavailable, all subjects resorted to a letter-by-letter-like processing strategy in reading but not in search. Although reading and search were found to be sensitive to the same types of spatial manipulations, discrepancies of span and speed suggest qualitative differences; comprehension demands during reading can account for these differences. The data were interpreted to provide support for the two-stage model of Hochberg (1970).Reading can be defined as a translation of spatially presented lines and spaces into meaningful information. A number of experiments have recently been performed examining the spacial manipulations of printed text in reading and visual search. Smith (1969) and Smith, Lott, and Cronnel (1969) examined word shape changes, e.g., alternating upper and lower case, in reading and search, respectively. They found that reading speed and search efficiency were reduced significantly when word shape was changed. These data were interpreted as indicating that disruption of word identification processes was responsible for the reduction of performance. An extension of the word identification notion was offered more recently by Coltheart and Freeman (1974) in a tachistoscopic word recognition task using similar manipulations.Levin and Jones (Note I) and Hochberg, Levin, and Frail (Note 2) have found that the eye-voice span (difference between the words spoken and the words seen) was reduced and oral reading efficiency was disturbed when the spaces were filled between the words in textual material. They interpreted these data as indicating that ftlling the spaces interrupted peripheral cue accessibility leading to a strictly foveal input of the This research was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Education NE-G-OO-a-o017 and from the National Eye Institute 1 ROL EY 01201-01 to L. Lefton. The project presented herein was performed pursuant to grants from NIE and NEI and does not represent the policy or endorsement of these agencies. This paper may he reproduced in full or in part for any purpose of the United States Govemment. Reprint requests should be sent to Lester A. Lefton, University of South Carolina, Department of PsYchology, Columbia, South Carolina 29208. stimulus materials. Reliance upon the periphery was hypothesized to be developmentally related. According to this view, adults are reliant upon the periphery for physical featural cues, w...

Four experiments were conducted comparing the ways in which reading and search are affected by manipulations of word shape and word boundary. Word shape was manipulated by variations in type (normal, capitals, and alternating upper-and lowercase), while word boundary was manipulated by variations in spacing (normal, filled, and absent). The variations were combined factorially for nine space-type combinations. Experiments I and II were basic studies examining the effects of the manipulations on reading and on search, respectively. Search was found to be 2 to 2.5 times faster than reading. Reading and search both slowed to one-third of the normal speeds when spaces were removed and type altered. A significant interaction of Type by Space was found for reading but not for search. Experiments III and IV examined contextual and typographical effects on high-speed visual search through paragraphs. Form-class expectancy and target word predictability, respectively, were manipulated. In both experiments, subjects found the expected predictable words faster than the unexpected unpredictable words. The data were interpreted as providing support for the peripheral and cognitive search guidance processes hypothesized to be active in reading.The purposes of this series of studies are to examine the effects of certain visual perceptual cues, namely, word boundary, word shape, and their interactions, on reading and visual speed search; to ascertain the degree of contextual awareness taking place during search by manipulating target expectancy and predictability; and to evaluate the contributions of peripheral and foveal processing during reading and search.Hochberg and his associates (Note I) manipulated word boundary cues by filling the spaces between words with xs and &so In the filled space condition, they found that oral reading efficiency decreased. They interpreted the data as showing that the visual periphery picks up cues about word boundaries and that disrupting these cues by filling the spaces forces the reader to return to a more elementary (letter-by-letter or word-by-word) reading technique. In addition, Levin and Jones (Note 2) found a substantial reduction in the eyevoice span when spaces between words were filled. McConkie (Note 3) and McConkie and Rayner (Note 4) found that reading speed decreased and saccadic eye movements were more restricted in angular extent when the spaces between words were filled. In short, the findings indicate the importance of interword spaces; perturbing them drastically reduces the ability of the visual periphery to detect word boundary information, leading to slower, less efficient reading. Smith (1969) and Smith, Lott, and Cronnell (1969) examined word shape effects on reading and searching through paragraphs. They found that reading speed and multiple target search efficiency decreased significantly when text was typed in alternating large and small letters, irrespective of case, compared to normally typed text. Word shape, then, appears to be another important cue used during ...

The experiment examined the effects of reduced discriminability on absolute judgments in speeded and unspeeded tasks. The 5s were required to locate the position of a vertical bar marker that was shown in 1 of 10 possible locations. Reaction time and information transmission measures were compared in conditions that varied (a) the degradation of the background luminance of the stimulus and (&) the narrowing of the stimulus field. Degrading the luminance influenced performance to the same extent regardless of the speed constraints, whereas the effects of narrowing of the stimulus field were reduced as the speed constraints increased.

While reading text, the eye movements of good and poor reading fifth graders, third graders and adults were assessed. Subjects were tested in two sessions one year apart. Dependent variables included the duration and frequency of forward going fixations and regressions; an analysis of individual differences was also made. Results showed that poor reading fifth graders have relatively unsystematic eye movement behavior with many more fixations of longer duration than other fifth graders and adults. The eye movements of poor readers are quantitatively and qualitatively different than those of normal readers.

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