TY  - GEN
A1  - Frömer, Romy
A1  - Dimigen, Olaf
A1  - Niefind, Florian
A1  - Kliegl, Reinhold
A1  - Sommer, Werner
T1  - Are individual differences in reading speed related to extrafoveal visual acuity and crowding?
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Readers differ considerably in their speed of self-paced reading. One factor known to influence fixation durations in reading is the preprocessing of words in parafoveal vision. Here we investigated whether individual differences in reading speed or the amount of information extracted from upcoming words (the preview benefit) can be explained by basic differences in extrafoveal vision-i.e., the ability to recognize peripheral letters with or without the presence of flanking letters. Forty participants were given an adaptive test to determine their eccentricity thresholds for the identification of letters presented either in isolation (extrafoveal acuity) or flanked by other letters (crowded letter recognition). In a separate eye-tracking experiment, the same participants read lists of words from left to right, while the preview of the upcoming words was manipulated with the gaze-contingent moving window technique. Relationships between dependent measures were analyzed on the observational level and with linear mixed models. We obtained highly reliable estimates both for extrafoveal letter identification (acuity and crowding) and measures of reading speed (overall reading speed, size of preview benefit). Reading speed was higher in participants with larger uncrowded windows. However, the strength of this relationship was moderate and it was only observed if other sources of variance in reading speed (e.g., the occurrence of regressive saccades) were eliminated. Moreover, the size of the preview benefit-an important factor in normal reading-was larger in participants with better extrafoveal acuity. Together, these results indicate a significant albeit moderate contribution of extrafoveal vision to individual differences in reading speed.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 494 
KW  - eye-movement control
KW  - object recognition
KW  - perceptual span
KW  - preview benefit
KW  - syntactic ambiguity
KW  - attention
KW  - fixation
KW  - readers
KW  - repetition
KW  - resolution
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-408003
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 494
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yan, Ming
A1  - Zhou, Wei
A1  - Shu, Hua
A1  - Kliegl, Reinhold
T1  - Perceptual span depends on font size during the reading of chinese sentences
JF  - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition
N2  - The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results showed that Chinese readers needed at least 4 characters to the right of fixation to maintain a normal reading behavior when visually similar masks were used and when characters were displayed in small fonts, indicating that the span is dynamically influenced by masking materials. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked whether the perceptual span varies as a function of font size in spaced (German) and unspaced (Chinese) scripts. Results clearly suggest perceptual span depends on font size in Chinese, but we failed to find such evidence for German. We propose that the perceptual span in Chinese is flexible; it is strongly constrained by its language-specific properties such as high information density and lack of word spacing. Implications for saccade-target selection during the reading of Chinese sentences are discussed.
KW  - eye movements
KW  - parafoveal processing
KW  - perceptual span
KW  - Chinese reading
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038097
SN  - 0278-7393
SN  - 1939-1285
VL  - 41
IS  - 1
SP  - 209
EP  - 219
PB  - American Psychological Association
CY  - Washington
ER  -