This proposal represents a major investigation of the development of perception and attention which occurs as children learn to read. Eye movement contigent display control techniques will be used to study various facets of children's perceptual processes as they are engaged in the act of reading text. Experiments are proposed which deal with four general areas: 1. Describing basic characteristics of the eye movement patterns of children of different reading levels. 2. Investigating changes in some basic characteristics of the perceptual processing during reading which occur as reading skill develops, including changes in the size of the region attended during a fixation, changes in the integration of information across fixations, and changes in the nature of eye guidance. 3. Studying the process of word perception as it occurs during reading, and describing the changes that take place as reading skill improves. 4. Studying the perception of word sequences encountered across fixations, with an emphasis on the basis for, and result of, interword regressions.
| McConkie, G W; Kerr, P W; Reddix, M D et al. (1989) Eye movement control during reading: II. Frequency of refixating a word. Percept Psychophys 46:245-53 |
