Don’t Believe What You Read (Only Once)

Abstract

Recent Web apps have spurred excitement around the prospect of achieving speed reading by eliminating eye movements (i.e., with rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP, in which words are presented briefly one at a time and sequentially). Our experiment using a novel trailing-mask paradigm contradicts these claims. Subjects read normally or while the display of text was manipulated such that each word was masked once the reader's eyes moved past it. This manipulation created a scenario similar to RSVP: The reader could read each word only once; regressions (i.e., rereadings of words), which are a natural part of the reading process, were functionally eliminated. Crucially, the inability to regress affected comprehension negatively. Furthermore, this effect was not confined to ambiguous sentences. These data suggest that regressions contribute to the ability to understand what one has read and call into question the viability of speed-reading apps that eliminate eye movements (e.g., those that use RSVP).

Spontaneous rereading within sentences: Eye movement control and visual sampling.

“…Crucially, the results of Experiment 1 indicate that the availability of wordn-1 during first-pass is important for comprehension. The significantly lower question response accuracy for the Beyond wordn condition compared to the control is consistent with the findings of Schotter et al (2014). However there was no difference in question response accuracy between the control and the Beyond wordn-1 condition, indicating that the lower comprehension in the Beyond wordn condition is due to wordn-1 being unavailable.…”

“…The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated, in line with Schotter et al (2014), that removing text permanently beyond wordn is detrimental for comprehension. However in contrast, Experiment 1 showed that removing text permanently beyond wordn-1 had no Spontaneous re-reading within sentences 36 effect on question response accuracy, indicating that the availability of wordn-1 is important for comprehension.…”

“…That is, in the Beyond wordn condition masking starts one word before the fixated word, whereas in the Beyond wordn-1 condition masking starts two words before the fixated word. These The Beyond wordn condition employs the trailing mask paradigm introduced by Schotter et al (2014). However in Schotter et al's study there was a cue before each trial indicating if the mask would be displayed, and the mask did not retain word shape information (only word length).…”

“…However it is notoriously difficult to study the mechanisms underlying spontaneous re-reading as it does not always occur, and when it does occur, the timing and location of the re-reading is variable (von der Malsburg, Kliegl, & Vasishth, 2015; von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011). Two recent studies manipulated how previously read words were displayed within a sentence using the gaze contingent change technique (Booth & Weger, 2013;Schotter, Tran & Rayner, 2014). These studies enabled naturalistic reading behavior such that regressions were triggered spontaneously, Spontaneous re-reading within sentences 3 rather than due to another task such as responding to a target word (Weger & Inhoff, 2007).…”

“…Future studies may examine comprehension with stimuli and questions that are very carefully designed to detect subtle differences, ideally generating a broad range of comprehension levels that might better differentiate standards of comprehension. Further research may also examine how re-reading and the availability of previously read text is linked to comprehension specifically for cases where re-reading occurs (see Christiansen et al, 2016;Schotter et al, 2014). Further studies may examine how re-reading of previously read text may modulate confidence in text comprehension or integration of text with prior knowledge.…”