Toward an appropriate baseline for measures of eye movement behavior during reading

Scott A. McDonald*, Richard C. Shillcock

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In empirical studies of human eye movement behavior during reading, it is common to compute various summary measures from the data, but these measures are typically not evaluated with respect to corresponding measures of baseline performance. The authors present a method for deriving an appropriate baseline by mapping the actual behavior to a random perturbation of the text being read, and they find surprising similarities between the baseline and the empirical data. The practical message from these findings is that the importance of a particular factor in explaining either empirical or simulated eye movement patterns should be evaluated using an appropriate baseline. In addition to this methodological point, the authors suggest that eye movement behavior in reading may be constrained by the properties of an eye-guidance system that has adapted to the coarse-grained statistical properties of written language.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)584-591
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Volume31
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2005
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Eye movements
  • Fixation location
  • Random baseline
  • Reading
  • Text

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Behavioral Neuroscience

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