The DUT task
A novel experimental paradigm to investigate the variability of eye movements in whole-text reading for meaning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jrds.35601Keywords:
reading, eye tracking, eye movements, statistics, variability, whole textsAbstract
This article reports on the development of a novel experimental paradigm for the investigation of the statistical properties of eye movements in whole-text reading, with a focus on variability. Eye movements in reading for meaning were compared to eye movements in proofreading without comprehending, using texts as stimuli that were deemed to be difficult and uninteresting to participants, and hence to effectively preclude reading for meaning in the proofreading condition. Using a linear mixed model for a 4-way ANOVA, variability of total fixation durations and number of fixations was found to be significantly different between conditions, but only for one of the two texts in one of the two designs. This suggests that there may be a correlation between reading proficiency and variability of eye movements, but also that in order to determine this correlation, stimulus texts must be precisely tailored to the participant population.
References
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Paulson, E. J. (2005). Viewing eye movements during reading through the lens of chaos theory: How reading is like the weather. Reading Research Quarterly 40: 338–358. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.40.3.3
RAND Reading Study Group (2002). Reading for Understanding. Toward and R&D Program in Reading Comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin 134: 372–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372
Rayner, K. (2009). The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett lecture: Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62, 1457–1506. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210902816461
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R Core Team (2016). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved on 6 March 2017 from https://www.R-project.org/
Schmeisser, E. T., McDonough, J. M., Bond, M., Hislop, P. D., and Epstein, A. D. (2001). Fractal analysis of eye movements during reading. Optometry and Vision Science 78: 805–814. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006324-200111000-00010
Schnitzer, B. S. and Kowler, E. (2006). Eye movements during multiple readings of the same text. Vision Research 46: 1611–1632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2005.09.023
Schotter, E. R., Bicknell, K., Howard, I., Levy, R., and Rayner, K. (2014). Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading. Cognition 131: 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.018
Smith, F. (2004). Understanding Reading. A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read (6th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Tobii AB (2010). Tobii Studio 2.X Software Release 2.2 Manual. Falls Church, VA: Tobii Technology AB.
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Traxler, M. J., Johns, C. L., Long, D. L., Zirnstein, M., Tooley, K. M., and Jonathan, E. (2012). Individual differences in eye-movements during reading: Working memory and speed-of-processing effects. Journal of Eye Movement Research 5: 1–16.
Underwood, G, Hubbard, A., and Wilkinson, H. (1990). Eye fixations predict reading comprehension: The relationships between reading skill, reading speed, and visual inspection. Language and Speech 33: 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099003300105
Wade, S. E. and Adams, B. (1990). Effects of importance and interest on recall of biographical texts. JRB: A Journal of Literacy 22: 331–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/10862969009547717
Brown, J., Kim, K., and O‘Brien Ramirez, K. (2012). What a teacher hears, what a reader sees: Eye movements from a phonics taught second grader. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 12: 202–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798411417081
Cronbach, L. J. (1975). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist 30: 671–684. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076829
Damico, J. S. and Ball, M. J. (2010). Prolegomenon: Addressing the tyranny of old ideas. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders 1 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v1i1.1
Damico, J. S. and Nelson, R. L. (2010). Reading and reading impairments. In J. S. Damico, N. Müller, and M. J. Ball (Eds) The Handbook of Speech and Language Disorders, 267–295. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444318975.ch12
Duckett, P. d. B. (2003). Envisioning story: The eye movements of beginning readers. Literacy Teaching and Learning 7: 77–89.
Fulcher, G. (1997). Text difficulty and accessibility: Reading formulae and expert judgement. System 25: 497–513. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0346-251X(97)00048-1
Goldberger, A. L. (2006). Complex systems. Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society 3: 467–472. https://doi.org/10.1513/pats.200603-028MS
Goldberger, A. L., Moody, G. B., and Costa, M. D. (2012). Variability vs. complexity. Retrieved on 5 March 2016 from https://physionet.org/tutorials/cv/#11-variable-
Goodman, K. S. (1994). Reading, writing, and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In R. B. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, and H. Singer (Eds) Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (4th ed.), 1093–1130. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Gough, P. B., Hoover, W. A., and Peterson, C. L. (1996). Some observations on a simple view of reading. In C. Cornoldi and J. Oakhill (Eds), Reading Comprehension Difficulties: Processes and Intervention, 1–13. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Henderson, J. M. and Luke, S. G. (2014). Stable individual differences in saccadic eye movements during reading, pseudoreading, scene viewing, and scene search. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 40: 1390–1400. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036330
Hidi, S. (2001). Interest, reading, and learning: theoretical and practical considerations. Educational Psychology Review 13: 191–209. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016667621114
Hoover, W. A. and Gough, P. B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2, 127–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401799
Kaakinen, J. K. and Hyönä, J. (2010). Task effects on eye movements during reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 36: 1561–1566. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020693
Kintsch, W. (1980). Learning from text, levels of comprehension, or: why anyone would read a story anyway. Poetics 9: 87–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(80)90013-3
Kuperman, V. and Van Dyke, J. A. (2011). Effects of individual differences in verbal skills on eye-movement patterns during sentence reading. Journal of Memory and Language 65: 42–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.03.002
Lehmann, E. L. (2006). Nonparametrics: Statistical Methods Based on Ranks. New York: Springer.
Li, X., Rayner, K., Williams, C. C., Cave, K. R., and Well, A. D. (2007). Eye movements and individual differences. Visual Cognition 15: 105–108.
Murphy, S. (2013). Assessing text difficulty for students. ‘What works? Research into practice’ Research Monograph #44. Retrieved on 26 February 2016 from https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_ATDS.pdf
Nelson, N. (2010). Language and Literacy Disorders: Infancy Through Adolescence. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Nelson, R. L., Damico, J., and Smith, S. (2008). Applying eye movement miscue analysis to the reading patterns of children with language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 22: 293–303 https://doi.org/10.1080/02699200801919265
Noë, A. (2014). The world looked better through Anne Hollander’s eyes. Retrieved on 12 October 2015 from http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2014/07/11/330746330/the-world-looked-better-through-anne-hollanders-eyes
Noë, A. (2015). Peering into Rembrandt’s eyes. Retrieved on 6 September 2015 from http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/05/22/408695887/peeringintorembrandtseyes
Paulson, E. J. (2002). Are oral reading word omissions and substitutions caused by careless eye movements? Reading Psychology 23: 45–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/027027102317345402
Paulson, E. J. (2005). Viewing eye movements during reading through the lens of chaos theory: How reading is like the weather. Reading Research Quarterly 40: 338–358. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.40.3.3
RAND Reading Study Group (2002). Reading for Understanding. Toward and R&D Program in Reading Comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin 134: 372–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372
Rayner, K. (2009). The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett lecture: Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62, 1457–1506. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210902816461
Rayner, K. and Juhasz, B. (2006). Reading processes in adults. In R. E. Asher and M. M. Y. Simpson (Eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 10, 373–378. Amsterdam: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00794-X
Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E., Potter, M. C., and Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17: 4–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267
R Core Team (2016). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved on 6 March 2017 from https://www.R-project.org/
Schmeisser, E. T., McDonough, J. M., Bond, M., Hislop, P. D., and Epstein, A. D. (2001). Fractal analysis of eye movements during reading. Optometry and Vision Science 78: 805–814. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006324-200111000-00010
Schnitzer, B. S. and Kowler, E. (2006). Eye movements during multiple readings of the same text. Vision Research 46: 1611–1632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2005.09.023
Schotter, E. R., Bicknell, K., Howard, I., Levy, R., and Rayner, K. (2014). Task effects reveal cognitive flexibility responding to frequency and predictability: Evidence from eye movements in reading and proofreading. Cognition 131: 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.018
Smith, F. (2004). Understanding Reading. A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read (6th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Tobii AB (2010). Tobii Studio 2.X Software Release 2.2 Manual. Falls Church, VA: Tobii Technology AB.
Tobii AB (2015). Tobii Pro X260 Eye Tracker. Retrieved on 16 June 2013 from http://www.tobiipro.com/productlisting/tobiiprox260/
Traxler, M. J., Johns, C. L., Long, D. L., Zirnstein, M., Tooley, K. M., and Jonathan, E. (2012). Individual differences in eye-movements during reading: Working memory and speed-of-processing effects. Journal of Eye Movement Research 5: 1–16.
Underwood, G, Hubbard, A., and Wilkinson, H. (1990). Eye fixations predict reading comprehension: The relationships between reading skill, reading speed, and visual inspection. Language and Speech 33: 69–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099003300105
Wade, S. E. and Adams, B. (1990). Effects of importance and interest on recall of biographical texts. JRB: A Journal of Literacy 22: 331–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/10862969009547717
Published
2018-09-12
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Kroll, T. A., Trindade, A. A., Asikis, A., Salas, M., Lau, M., Saenz, C., Head, M., Prematilake, C., & Perry, C. (2018). The DUT task: A novel experimental paradigm to investigate the variability of eye movements in whole-text reading for meaning. Journal of Research Design and Statistics in Linguistics and Communication Science, 4(2), 124-143. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrds.35601
