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The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) with a novel preview manipulation was used to examine the extent of parafoveal processing of words to the right of fixation. Words n + 1 and n + 2 had either correct or incorrect previews prior to fixation (prior to crossing the boundary location). In addition, the manipulation utilized either a high or low frequency word in word n + 1 location on the assumption that it would be more likely that n + 2 preview effects could be obtained when word n + 1 was high frequency. The primary findings were that there was no evidence for a preview benefit for word n + 2 and no evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects when word n + 1 is at least four letters long. We discuss implications for models of eye-movement control in reading.
The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) with a novel preview manipulation was used to examine the extent of parafoveal processing of words to the right of fixation. Words n+1 and n+2 had either correct or incorrect previews prior to fixation (prior to crossing the boundary location). In addition, the manipulation utilized either a high or low frequency word in word n+1 location on the assumption that it would be more likely that n+2 preview effects could be obtained when word n+1 was high frequency. The primary findings were that there was no evidence for a preview benefit for word n+2 and no evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects when word n+1 is at least four letters long. We discuss implications for models of eye-movement control in reading.
The main goal of our target article was to provide concrete recommendations for improving the replicability of research findings. Most of the comments focus on this point. In addition, a few comments were concerned with the distinction between replicability and generalizability and the role of theory in replication. We address all comments within the conceptual structure of the target article and hope to convince readers that replication in psychological science amounts to much more than hitting the lottery twice.
Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science. The aim of this article is to move the current replicability debate in psychology towards concrete recommendations for improvement. We focus on research practices but also offer guidelines for reviewers, editors, journal management, teachers, granting institutions, and university promotion committees, highlighting some of the emerging and existing practical solutions that can facilitate implementation of these recommendations. The challenges for improving replicability in psychological science are systemic. Improvement can occur only if changes are made at many levels of practice, evaluation, and reward.
Experimental and quantitative research in the field of human language processing and production strongly depends on the quality of the underlying language material: beside its size, representativeness, variety and balance have been discussed as important factors which influence design, analysis and interpretation of experiments and their results. This volume brings together creators and users of both general purpose and specialized lexical resources which are used in psychology, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and cognitive research. It aims to be a forum to report experiences and results, review problems and discuss perspectives of any linguistic data used in the field.
Fluid intelligence belongs to that cluster of intellectual abilities evincing aging loss. To examine further the range of intellectual reserve available to aging individuals and the question of replicability in a new cultural and laboratory setting, 204 healthy older adults (mean age = 72 years; range = 60-86) participated in a short-term longitudinal training study. For experimental subjects, 10 sessions consisted of cognitive training involving two subability tests (Figural Relations, Induction) of fluid intelligence. The pattern of outcomes replicates and expands on earlier studies. Older adults have the reserve to evince substantial increases in levels of performance in fluid intelligence tests. Transfer of training, however, is narrow in scope. Training also increases accuracy of performance and the ability to solve more difficult test items. Difficulty level was estimated in a separate study, with a comparable sample of N = 112 elderly adults. Future research is suggested to examine whether intellectual reserve extends to near-maximum levels of performance.
Earlier testing-the-limits research on age differences in cognitive plasticity of a memory skill was extended by 18 additional assessment and training sessions to explore whether older adults were able to catch up with additional practice and improved training conditions. The focus was on the method of loci, which requires mental imagination to encode and retrieve lists of words from memory in serial order. Of the original 37 subjects, 35 (16 young, ranging from 20 to 30 years of age, and 19 older adults, ranging from 66 to 80 years of age) participated in the follow-up study. Older adults showed sizable performance deficits when compared with young adults and tested for limits of reserve capacity. The negative age difference was substantial, resistant to extensive practice, and applied to all subjects studied. The primary origin for this negative age difference may be a loss in the production and use of mental imagination for operations of the mind.
Gedächtnishöchstleistungen sind auch im Alter möglich. Dies konnte am Beispiel der »Methode der Orte« experimentell bestätigt werden. Hierbei hat sich gezeigt, daß das Gehirn über große kognitive Kapazitätsreserven verfügt. In einer speziellen Testmethode (»testing the limits«) zeigt sich aber im Hochleistungsbereich, trotz der grundsätzlichen Plastizität, ein altersbezogenes Nachlassen der Gedächtnismechanik. Offenbar gibt es biologische Grenzen in der Schnelligkeit der menschlichen Vorstellungskraft. Vielleicht gelingt es auf der Grundlage dieser Erkentnnis, einen zuverlässigen Markierungsindikator für das hirnphysiologische Altern zu finden. Daraus könnten sich auch neue Methoden zur Früherkennung von Demenzen ableiten lassen.
On the locus of training gains in research on the plasticity of fluid intelligence in old age
(1988)
Cognitive training research has shown that many older adults have a substantial reserve capacity in fluid intelligence. Little is known, however, about the locus of plasticity. Two studies were conducted to examine whether training gains in fluid abilities are critically dependent on experimenter-guided training and/or whether older adults can achieve similar improvements by themselves on the basis of cognitive skills already available in their repertoire. Several comparisons were made: (a) between test performances after trainer-guided training in ability-specific cognitive skills and after self-guided retest practice (without feedback), (b) between performances under speeded and power conditions of assessment, (c) between performances on easy and difficult items, and (d) between the relative numbers of correct and wrong answers. Results suggest that a large share of the training improvement shown by the elderly can plausibly be explained as the result of the activation and practice of cognitive skills already available in their repertoire. The results also have implications for educational practice, pointing to the appropriateness of strategies of self-directed learning for many elderly adults.
Cognitive research on the plasticity of fluid intelligence has demonstrated that older adults benefit markedly from guided practice in cognitive skills and problem-solving strategies. We examined to what degree older adults are capable by themselves of achieving similar practice gains, focusing on the fluid ability of figural relations. A sample of 72 healthy older adults was assigned randomly to three conditions: control, tutor-guided training, self-guided training. Training time and training materials were held constant for the two training conditions. Posttraining performances were analyzed using a transfer of training paradigm in terms of three indicators: correct responses, accuracy, and level of item difficulty. The training programs were effective and produced a significant but narrow band of within-ability transfer. However, there was no difference between the two training groups. Older adults were shown to be capable of producing gains by themselves that were comparable to those obtained following tutor-guided training in the nature of test-relevant cognitive skills.
Postural control is important to cope with demands of everyday life. It has been shown that both attentional demand (i.e., cognitive processing) and fatigue affect postural control in young adults. However, their combined effect is still unresolved. Therefore, we investigated the effects of fatigue on single- (ST) and dual-task (DT) postural control. Twenty young subjects (age: 23.7 ± 2.7) performed an all-out incremental treadmill protocol. After each completed stage, one-legged-stance performance on a force platform under ST (i.e., one-legged-stance only) and DT conditions (i.e., one-legged-stance while subtracting serial 3s) was registered. On a second test day, subjects conducted the same balance tasks for the control condition (i.e., non-fatigued). Results showed that heart rate, lactate, and ventilation increased following fatigue (all p < 0.001; d = 4.2–21). Postural sway and sway velocity increased during DT compared to ST (all p < 0.001; d = 1.9–2.0) and fatigued compared to non-fatigued condition (all p < 0.001; d = 3.3–4.2). In addition, postural control deteriorated with each completed stage during the treadmill protocol (all p < 0.01; d = 1.9–3.3). The addition of an attention-demanding interference task did not further impede one-legged-stance performance. Although both additional attentional demand and physical fatigue affected postural control in healthy young adults, there was no evidence for an overadditive effect (i.e., fatigue-related performance decrements in postural control were similar under ST and DT conditions). Thus, attentional resources were sufficient to cope with the DT situations in the fatigue condition of this experiment.
Postural control is important to cope with demands of everyday life. It has been shown that both attentional demand (i.e., cognitive processing) and fatigue affect postural control in young adults. However, their combined effect is still unresolved. Therefore, we investigated the effects of fatigue on single- (ST) and dual-task (DT) postural control. Twenty young subjects (age: 23.7 ± 2.7) performed an all-out incremental treadmill protocol. After each completed stage, one-legged-stance performance on a force platform under ST (i.e., one-legged-stance only) and DT conditions (i.e., one-legged-stance while subtracting serial 3s) was registered. On a second test day, subjects conducted the same balance tasks for the control condition (i.e., non-fatigued). Results showed that heart rate, lactate, and ventilation increased following fatigue (all p < 0.001; d = 4.2–21). Postural sway and sway velocity increased during DT compared to ST (all p < 0.001; d = 1.9–2.0) and fatigued compared to non-fatigued condition (all p < 0.001; d = 3.3–4.2). In addition, postural control deteriorated with each completed stage during the treadmill protocol (all p < 0.01; d = 1.9–3.3). The addition of an attention-demanding interference task did not further impede one-legged-stance performance. Although both additional attentional demand and physical fatigue affected postural control in healthy young adults, there was no evidence for an overadditive effect (i.e., fatigue-related performance decrements in postural control were similar under ST and DT conditions). Thus, attentional resources were sufficient to cope with the DT situations in the fatigue condition of this experiment.
Postural control is important to cope with demands of everyday life. It has been shown that both attentional demand (i.e., cognitive processing) and fatigue affect postural control in young adults. However, their combined effect is still unresolved. Therefore, we investigated the effects of fatigue on single-(ST) and dual-task (DT) postural control. Twenty young subjects (age: 23.7 +/- 2.7) performed an all-out incremental treadmill protocol. After each completed stage, one-legged-stance performance on a force platform under ST (i.e., one-legged-stance only) and DT conditions (i.e., one-legged-stance while subtracting serial 3s) was registered. On a second test day, subjects conducted the same balance tasks for the control condition (i.e., non-fatigued). Results showed that heart rate, lactate, and ventilation increased following fatigue (all p < 0.001; d = 4.2-21). Postural sway and sway velocity increased during DT compared to ST (all p < 0.001; d = 1.9-2.0) and fatigued compared to non-fatigued condition (all p < 0.001; d = 3.3-4.2). In addition, postural control deteriorated with each completed stage during the treadmill protocol (all p < 0.01; d = 1.9-3.3). The addition of an attention-demanding interference task did not further impede one-legged-stance performance. Although both additional attentional demand and physical fatigue affected postural control in healthy young adults, there was no evidence for an overadditive effect (i.e., fatigue-related performance decrements in postural control were similar under ST and DT conditions). Thus, attentional resources were sufficient to cope with the DT situations in the fatigue condition of this experiment.
Effects of Backpack Carriage on Dual-Task Performance in Children During Standing and Walking
(2016)
Zur Interaktion von Verarbeitungstiefe und dem Wortvorhersagbarkeitseffekt beim Lesen von Sätzen
(2008)
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty, but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers' eye fixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated; and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
Parsing costs as predictors of reading difficulty : an evaluation using the Potsdam Sentence Corpus
(2008)
Parsing costs as predictors of reading difficulty: An evaluation using the Potsdam Sentence Corpus
(2008)
The surprisal of a word on a probabilistic grammar constitutes a promising complexity metric for human sentence comprehension difficulty. Using two different grammar types, surprisal is shown to have an effect on fixation durations and regression probabilities in a sample of German readers’ eye movements, the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. A linear mixed-effects model was used to quantify the effect of surprisal while taking into account unigram and bigram frequency, word length, and empirically-derived word predictability; the so-called “early” and “late” measures of processing difficulty both showed an effect of surprisal. Surprisal is also shown to have a small but statistically non-significant effect on empirically-derived predictability itself. This work thus demonstrates the importance of including parsing costs as a predictor of comprehension difficulty in models of reading, and suggests that a simple identification of syntactic parsing costs with early measures and late measures with durations of post-syntactic events may be difficult to uphold.
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers’ eyefixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated, and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
Eye fixation durations during normal reading correlate with processing difficulty, but the specific cognitive mechanisms reflected in these measures are not well understood. This study finds support in German readers' eye fixations for two distinct difficulty metrics: surprisal, which reflects the change in probabilities across syntactic analyses as new words are integrated; and retrieval, which quantifies comprehension difficulty in terms of working memory constraints. We examine the predictions of both metrics using a family of dependency parsers indexed by an upper limit on the number of candidate syntactic analyses they retain at successive words. Surprisal models all fixation measures and regression probability. By contrast, retrieval does not model any measure in serial processing. As more candidate analyses are considered in parallel at each word, retrieval can account for the same measures as surprisal. This pattern suggests an important role for ranked parallelism in theories of sentence comprehension.
People perceive sentences more favourably after hearing or reading them many times. A prominent approach in linguistic theory argues that these types of exposure effects (satiation effects) show direct evidence of a generative approach to linguistic knowledge: only some sentences improve under repeated exposure, and which sentences do improve can be predicted by a model of linguistic competence that yields natural syntactic classes. However, replications of the original findings have been inconsistent, and it remains unclear whether satiation effects can be reliably induced in an experimental setting at all. Here we report four findings regarding satiation effects in wh-questions across German and English. First, the effects pertain to zone of well-formedness rather than syntactic class: all intermediate ratings, including calibrated fillers, increase at the beginning of the experimental session regardless of syntactic construction. Second, though there is satiation, ratings asymptote below maximum acceptability. Third, these effects are consistent across judgments of superiority effects in English and German. Fourth, wh-questions appear to show similar profiles in English and German, despite these languages being traditionally considered to differ strongly in whether they show effects on movement: violations of the superiority condition can be modulated to a similar degree in both languages by manipulating subject-object initiality and animacy congruency of the wh-phrase. We improve on classic satiation methods by distinguishing between two crucial tests, namely whether exposure selectively targets certain grammatical constructions or whether there is a general repeated exposure effect. We conclude that exposure effects can be reliably induced in rating experiments but exposure does not appear to selectively target certain grammatical constructions. Instead, they appear to be a phenomenon of intermediate gradient judgments.
Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490 ms, respectively. While these rates are typical for psycholinguistic ERP research, natural reading happens at a considerably faster pace. Accordingly. Experiment 3 employed a near-normal SOA of 280 ms, which approximated the rate of normal reading. Main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The onset latency of early frequency effects decreases gradually with increasing presentation rates. (2) An early interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing is observed only under a near-normal SOA. (3) N400 predictability effects occur later and are smaller at a near-normal (i.e., high) presentation rate than at the lower rates commonly used in ERP experiments. (4) ERP morphology is different at the shortest compared to longer SOAs. Together, the results point to a special role of a near-normal presentation rate for visual word recognition and therefore suggest that SOA should be taken into account in research of natural reading.
We examined relations between eye movements (single-fixation durations) and RSVP-based event-related potentials (ERPs; N400’s) recorded during reading the same sentences in two independent experiments. Longer fixation durations correlated with larger N400 amplitudes. Word frequency and predictability of the fixated word as well as the predictability of the upcoming word accounted for this covariance in a path-analytic model. Moreover, larger N400 amplitudes entailed longer fixation durations on the next word, a relation accounted for by word frequency. This pattern offers a neurophysiological correlate for the lag-word frequency effect on fixation durations: Word processing is reliably expressed not only in fixation durations on currently fixated words, but also in those on subsequently fixated words.
We examined relations between eye movements (single-fixation durations) and RSVP-based event-related potentials (ERPs; N400s) recorded during reading the same sentences in two independent experiments. Longer fixation durations correlated with larger N400 amplitudes. Word frequency and predictability of the fixated word as well as the predictability of the upcoming word accounted for this covariance in a path-analytic model. Moreover, larger N400 amplitudes entailed longer fixation durations on the next word, a relation accounted for by word frequency. This pattern offers a neurophysiological correlate for the lag-word frequency effect on fixation durations: word processing is reliably expressed not only in fixation durations on currently fixated words, but also in those on subsequently fixated words.
Effects of frequency, predictability, and position of words on event-related potentials were assessed during word-by-word sentence reading in 48 subjects in an early and in a late time window corresponding to P200 and N400. Repeated measures multiple regression analyses revealed a P200 effect in the high-frequency range also the P200 was larger on words at the beginning and end of sentences than on words in the middle of sentences (i.e., a quadratic effect of word position). Predictability strongly affected the N400 component; the effect was stronger for low than for high- frequency words. The P200 frequency effect indicates that high-frequency words are lexically accessed very fast, independent of context information. Effects on the N400 suggest that predictability strongly moderates the late access especially of low-frequency words. Thus, contextual facilitation on the N400 appears to reflect both lexical and post- lexical stages of word recognition, questioning a strict classification into lexical and post-lexical processes.
Human information processing depends critically on continuous predictions about upcoming events, but the temporal convergence of expectancy-based top-down and input-driven bottom-up streams is poorly understood. We show that, during reading, event-related potentials differ between exposure to highly predictable and unpredictable words no later than 90 ms after visual input. This result suggests an extremely rapid comparison of expected and incoming visual information and gives an upper temporal bound for theories of top-down and bottom-up interactions in object recognition.
It is well established that fixation durations during reading vary with processing difficulty, but there are different views on how oculomotor control, visual perception, shifts of attention, and lexical (and higher cognitive) processing are coordinated. Evidence for a one-to-one translation of input delay into saccadic latency would provide a much needed constraint for current theoretical proposals. Here, we tested predictions of such a direct-control perspective using the stimulus-onset delay (SOD) paradigm. Words in sentences were initially masked and, on fixation, were individually unmasked with a delay (0-, 33-, 66-, 99-ms SODs). In Experiment 1, SODs were constant for all words in a sentence; in Experiment 2, SODs were manipulated on target words, while nontargets were unmasked without delay. In accordance with predictions of direct control, nonzero SODs entailed equivalent increases in fixation durations in both experiments. Yet, a population of short fixations pointed to rapid saccades as a consequence of low-level information at nonoptimal viewing positions rather than of lexical processing. Implications of these results for theoretical accounts of oculomotor control are discussed.
During natural reading, a parafoveal preview of the upcoming word facilitates its subsequent recognition (e.g., shorter fixation durations compared to masked preview) but nothing is known about the neural correlates of this so-called preview benefit. Furthermore, while the evidence is strong that readers preprocess orthographic features of upcoming words, it is controversial whether word meaning can also be accessed parafoveally. We investigated the timing, scope, and electrophysiological correlates of parafoveal information use in reading by simultaneously recording eye movements and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) while participants read word lists fluently from left to right. For one word the target (e.g., "blade") parafoveal information was manipulated by showing an identical ("blade"), semantically related ("knife"), or unrelated ("sugar") word as preview. In boundary trials, the preview was shown parafoveally but changed to the correct target word during the incoming saccade. Replicating classic findings, target words were fixated shorter after identical previews. In the EEG, this benefit was reflected in an occipitotemporal preview positivity between 200 and 280 ms. In contrast, there was no facilitation from related previews. In parafoveal-on-foveal trials, preview and target were embedded at neighboring list positions without a display change. Consecutive fixation of two related words produced N400 priming effects, but only shortly (160 ms) after the second word was directly fixated. Results demonstrate that neural responses to words are substantially altered by parafoveal preprocessing under normal reading conditions. We found no evidence that word meaning contributes to these effects. Saccade-contingent display manipulations can be combined with EEG recordings to study extrafoveal perception in vision.
Brain-electric correlates of reading have traditionally been studied with word-by-word presentation, a condition that eliminates important aspects of the normal reading process and precludes direct comparisons between neural activity and oculomotor behavior. In the present study, we investigated effects of word predictability on eye movements (EM) and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) during natural sentence reading. Electroencephalogram (EEG) and EM (via video-based eye tracking) were recorded simultaneously while subjects read heterogeneous German sentences, moving their eyes freely over the text. FRPs were time-locked to first-pass reading fixations and analyzed according to the cloze probability of the currently fixated word. We replicated robust effects of word predictability on EMs and the N400 component in FRPs. The data were then used to model the relation among fixation duration, gaze duration, and N400 amplitude, and to trace the time course of EEG effects relative to effects in EM behavior. In an extended Methodological Discussion section, we review 4 technical and data-analytical problems that need to be addressed when FRPs are recorded in free-viewing situations (such as reading, visual search, or scene perception) and propose solutions. Results suggest that EEG recordings during normal vision are feasible and useful to consolidate findings from EEG and eye-tracking studies.
Microsaccades are very small, involuntary flicks in eye position that occur on average once or twice per second during attempted visual fixation. Microsaccades give rise to EMG eye muscle spikes that can distort the spectrum of the scalp EEG and mimic increases in gamma band power. Here we demonstrate that microsaccades are also accompanied by genuine and sizeable cortical activity, manifested in the EEG. In three experiments, high-resolution eye movements were corecorded with the EEG: during sustained fixation of checkerboard and face stimuli and in a standard visual oddball task that required the counting of target stimuli. Results show that microsaccades as small as 0.15° generate a field potential over occipital cortex and midcentral scalp sites 100 –140 ms after movement onset, which resembles the visual lambda response evoked by larger voluntary saccades. This challenges the standard assumption of human brain imaging studies that saccade-related brain activity is precluded by fixation, even when fully complied with. Instead, additional cortical potentials from microsaccades were present in 86% of the oddball task trials and of similar amplitude as the visual response to stimulus onset. Furthermore, microsaccade probability varied systematically according to the proportion of target stimuli in the oddball task, causing modulations of late stimulus-locked event-related potential (ERP) components. Microsaccades present an unrecognized source of visual brain signal that is of interest for vision research and may have influenced the data of many ERP and neuroimaging studies.
Elderly adults (N = 116; average age = 73 years) were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups varying in the amount of training and testing on fluid intelligence tests. They were compared before and after treatment on self-efficacy and utility beliefs for intelligence tests and everyday competence. Although both ability training and extended retest practice resulted in significant gains in objective test performance (Baltes, Kliegl, & Dittmann-Kohli, 1988), only ability training resulted in positive changes in self-efficacy. However, these changes were restricted to testrelated self-efficacy. Training had no impact on perceived utility or on everyday self-efficacy beliefs. Implications of the results are discussed with regard to interventions to increase intellectual self-efficacy in elderly persons.
Computational models such as E-Z Reader and SWIFT are ideal theoretical tools to test quantitatively our current understanding of eye-movement control in reading. Here we present a mathematical analysis of word skipping in the E-Z Reader model by semianalytic methods, to highlight the differences in current modeling approaches. In E-Z Reader, the word identification system must outperform the oculomotor system to induce word skipping. In SWIFT, there is competition among words to be selected as a saccade target. We conclude that it is the question of competitors in the “game” of word skipping that must be solved in eye movement research.
Computational models such as E-Z Reader and SWIFT are ideal theoretical tools to test quantitatively our current understanding of eye-movement control in reading. Here we present a mathematical analysis of word skipping in the E-Z Reader model by semianalytic methods, to highlight the differences in current modeling approaches. In E-Z Reader, the word identification system must outperform the oculomotor system to induce word skipping. In SWIFT, there is competition among words to be selected as a saccade target. We conclude that it is the question of competitors in the "game" of word skipping that must be solved in eye movement research
During reading, our eyes perform complicated sequences of fixations on words. Stochastic models of eye movement control suggest that this seemingly erratic behaviour can be attributed to noise in the oculomotor system and random fluctuations in lexical processing. Here, we present a qualitative analysis of a recently published dynamical model [Engbert et al., 2002] and propose that deterministic nonlinear control accounts for much of the observed complexity of eye movement patterns during reading. Based on a symbolic coding technique we analyze robust statistical features of simulated fixation sequences