Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Document Type
- Postprint (2)
Language
- English (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2) (remove)
Keywords
- eye movements (1)
- fixation duration (1)
- gaze (1)
- reading (1)
- word recognition (1)
Institute
Mathematical models have become an important tool for understanding the control of eye movements during reading. Main goals of the development of the SWIFT model (Engbert, Longtin, & Kliegl, 2002)were to investigate the possibility of spatially distributed processing and to implement a general mechanism for all types of eye movements we observe in reading experiments. Here, we present an advanced version of SWIFT which integrates properties of the oculomotor system and effects of word recognition to explain many of the experimental phenomena faced in reading research. We propose new procedures for the estimation of model parameters and for the test of the model’s performance. A mathematical analysis of the dynamics of the SWIFT model is presented. Finally, within this framework, we present an analysis of the transition from parallel to serial processing.
Reading requires the orchestration of visual, attentional, language-related, and oculomotor processing constraints. This study replicates previous effects of frequency, predictability, and length of fixated words on fixation durations in natural reading and demonstrates new effects of these variables related to previous and next words. Results are based on fixation durations recorded from 222 persons, each reading 144 sentences. Such evidence for distributed processing of words across fixation durations challenges psycholinguistic immediacy-of-processing and eye-mind assumptions. Most of the time the mind processes several words in parallel at different perceptual and cognitive levels. Eye movements can help to unravel these processes.