Masking of foveal and parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading.

Abstract

A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements. The size of the window or mask was varied so that either information in foveal or parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. In another experiment, the onset of the mask was delayed for a certain amount of time following the end of the saccade. The results of the experiments point out the relative importance of foveal and parafoveal vision for reading and further indicate that most of the visual information necessary for reading can be acquired during the first 50 msec that information is available during an eye fixation.

Time course of visual information utilization during fixations in reading.

“…Furthermore, the pattern of results also suggests a variable crucial period, since subjects sometimes reported seeing the first word and sometimes the second. In particular, contrary to the findings of Rayner et al (1981), the crucial period often occurs after the first 50 msec of a fixation. Of the instances where the second word was reported, that word was…”

“…The conclusion from the Rayner et al (1981) and Wolverton (1979, Wolverton & Zola, 1983) studies seems to be that sufficient visual information to maintain reading can be registered within the first 50 msec of a fixation, but the reader is capable of noticing information at any point during the fixation. The present study attempted to determine the period during which information is typically put to use during fixations as people read, without using a technique which forces this use to occur at a particular time.…”

Parafoveal preprocessing of word initial trigrams during reading in adults and children.

“…Studies using the moving window paradigm have shown that in skilled readers, the effective visual field in reading (the perceptual span) extends over an asymmetrical area from 3-4 characters spaces to the left of the fixated word to 14 -15 character spaces to the right of fixation in alphabetic languages (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). Word identification occurs in the area closest to fixation (between 3 and 4 letters to the left and 6 or 7 letters to the right of fixation; Rayner & Bertera, 1979;Rayner, Inhoff, Morrison, Slowiaczek, & Bertera, 1981).With respect to the size of the effective visual field in reading for children, studies have shown that the perceptual span increases with age. Thus, 7-to 9-year-old children were found to have a perceptual span of 3 to 4 letter spaces to the left of fixation and 11 letters to the right; while the span was 3 to 4 letters spaces to the left and 14 letters to the right of fixation in 11-year-old children (Häikiö, Bertram, Hyönä & Niemi, 2009;Rayner, 1986;Sperlich, Schad & Laubrock, 2015; see also Henderson & Ferreira, 1990).…”

Time Course of Linguistic Information Extraction From Consecutive Words During Eye Fixations in Reading.

“…Parafoveal-on-fovea effects, which appear to provide more direct evidence against the strict seriality assumption, have not always been consistent across experiments, and they were difficult to replicate in some cases (see Rayner et al, 2003, for a discussion). Given this state of affairs, specification of the time course of parafoveal processing during fluent reading is perhaps the most critical empirical issue in the discussion of current models of eye movement control in reading.Studies with eye-movement-contingent control of parafoveal word previews sought to determine the time course of parafoveal information use by manipulating the temporal interval during which useful information was available in the parafovea (Morris, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 1990;Morrison, 1984;Rayner, Inhoff, Morrison, Slowiaczek, & Bertera, 1981;Rayner & Pollatsek, 1981). In these experiments, sentence reading was impeded when the onset of useful parafoveal information was delayed by as little as 50 ms relative to the onset of a fixation, a finding that on the surface seems to contradict SAS models and also appears difficult to reconcile with gradient models.…”