The effects of the reader's skill and the difficulty of the text on the perceptual span in reading.

Abstract

Development of the perceptual span in reading was investigated by varying the availability of graphic information in the periphery of vision. Low-ability eighth-grade readers, high-ability eighth-grade readers, and skilled adult readers read texts presented in a normal prose format, with a single space between words, and texts typed with 13 letter spaces between words. It was found that removing peripheral information by wide spacing improved comprehension for low-ability eighth graders but did not affect their overall reading efficiency (the number of questions answered correctly per minute of reading time). Wide spacing decreased the reading efficiency of high-ability eighth-grade readers and skilled adult readers. In addition, the texts were of two levels of difficulty. It was hypothesized that subjects would employ a larger span of perception with the easy text. Surprisingly, the wide spacing of words did not produce greater decrement fo reading efficiency with the easy text. The findings thus suggest that the perceptual span may increase as reading skill develops but does not change under the influence of momentary task variables.

Effects of reading span and textual coherence on rapid-sequential reading

“…Their performance for RSVP reading presumably was not as good as that for page reading. In fact, Patberg and Yonas (1978) have discussed the possibility that skilled reading may be disrupted to a greater degree than less skilled reading by tasks requiring modifications of well-practiced techniques. However, a more efficient system would also be expected to be more flexible and independent of input methods.…”

The Span of Letter Recognition of Good and Poor Readers

“…Patberg and Yonas (1978) conducted a study in which good and poor readers read passages of normal text and passages typed with 13 spaces between each adjacent pair of words. By spacing the words so widely apart, they reduced the amount of peripheral information that could be acquired from one word while the…”

“…The span of perception was determined by establishing the size of the window at the point when eye movements were disrupted. Patberg and Yonas (1978) and Patberg (Note 2) used a simplified version of this principle i.e., eliminating the peripheral information in a developmental study. Again, the hypothesis was that the better reader would be more affected by the loss of peripheral information than the poorer reader.…”

“…The notion that the size of the perceptual span increases as a function of reading ability has many advocates among researchers seeking to explain the differences between skilled and less skilled readers (Gibson, & Levin, 1975;Haber, 1978;Harris, 1941;Patberg, & Yonas, 1978). Given the assumption that such an increase occurs, the reading theorist is then concerned with trying to account for how the skilled reader is able to acquire more information during a fixation than is his less able counterpart (LaBerge, & Samuels, 1974).…”

Active memory processes in visual sentence comprehension: Clause effects and pronominal reference

“…However, comprehension is evidently unaffected by the absence of this information. An experiment by Patberg and Yonas (1978) presented readers with either normal text or text that permitted a perceptual span of only one word (there were 13 letter spaces between words). For skilled readers, they found that, while the one-word presentation slowed reading speed, comprehension was unaffected compared with normal text.…”