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The Impact of skim reading and navigation when reading hyperlinks on the web

The Impact of skim reading and navigation when reading hyperlinks on the web
The Impact of skim reading and navigation when reading hyperlinks on the web
It has been shown that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that this type of reading can affect lexical processing of words. Across two experiments, we utilised eye tracking methodology to explore how hyperlinks and navigating webpages affect reading behaviour. In Experiment 1, participants read static Webpages either for comprehension or whilst skim reading, while in Experiment 2, participants additionally read through a navigable Web environment. Embedded target words were either hyperlinks or not and were either high-frequency or low-frequency words. Results from Experiment 1 show that while readers lexically process both linked and unlinked words when reading for comprehension, readers only fully lexically process linked words when skim reading, as was evidenced by a frequency effect that was absent for the unlinked words. They did fully lexically process both linked and unlinked words when reading for comprehension. In Experiment 2, which allowed for navigating, readers only fully lexically processed linked words compared to unlinked words, regardless of whether they were skim reading or reading for comprehension. We suggest that readers engage in an efficient reading strategy where they attempt to minimise comprehension loss while maintaining a high reading speed. Readers use hyperlinks as markers to suggest important information and use them to navigate through the text in an efficient and effective way. The task of reading on the Web causes readers to lexically process words in a markedly different way from typical reading experiments.
1932-6203
1-23
Fitzsimmons, Gemma
ac6b7c69-8992-44f1-92ca-05aa22e75129
Jayes, Lewis
09a32c04-4633-4963-aff4-0cf3cc20eca3
Weal, Mark
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Fitzsimmons, Gemma
ac6b7c69-8992-44f1-92ca-05aa22e75129
Jayes, Lewis
09a32c04-4633-4963-aff4-0cf3cc20eca3
Weal, Mark
e8fd30a6-c060-41c5-b388-ca52c81032a4
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce

Fitzsimmons, Gemma, Jayes, Lewis, Weal, Mark and Drieghe, Denis (2020) The Impact of skim reading and navigation when reading hyperlinks on the web. PLoS ONE, 15 (9), 1-23, [e0239134]. (doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239134).

Record type: Article

Abstract

It has been shown that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that this type of reading can affect lexical processing of words. Across two experiments, we utilised eye tracking methodology to explore how hyperlinks and navigating webpages affect reading behaviour. In Experiment 1, participants read static Webpages either for comprehension or whilst skim reading, while in Experiment 2, participants additionally read through a navigable Web environment. Embedded target words were either hyperlinks or not and were either high-frequency or low-frequency words. Results from Experiment 1 show that while readers lexically process both linked and unlinked words when reading for comprehension, readers only fully lexically process linked words when skim reading, as was evidenced by a frequency effect that was absent for the unlinked words. They did fully lexically process both linked and unlinked words when reading for comprehension. In Experiment 2, which allowed for navigating, readers only fully lexically processed linked words compared to unlinked words, regardless of whether they were skim reading or reading for comprehension. We suggest that readers engage in an efficient reading strategy where they attempt to minimise comprehension loss while maintaining a high reading speed. Readers use hyperlinks as markers to suggest important information and use them to navigate through the text in an efficient and effective way. The task of reading on the Web causes readers to lexically process words in a markedly different way from typical reading experiments.

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More information

Submitted date: 3 March 2020
Accepted/In Press date: 31 August 2020
Published date: 17 September 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: GF was funded by an EPSRC grant for the Doctoral Training Centre in Web Science: EP/ G036926/1. This work formed a part of a PhD completed in the Web Science DTC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2020 Fitzsimmons et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 443763
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/443763
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: 65016088-6bfe-4d2e-bb17-855eb25f2657
ORCID for Gemma Fitzsimmons: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4519-0499
ORCID for Mark Weal: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6251-8786
ORCID for Denis Drieghe: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9630-8410

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Date deposited: 11 Sep 2020 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:19

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Contributors

Author: Gemma Fitzsimmons ORCID iD
Author: Lewis Jayes
Author: Mark Weal ORCID iD
Author: Denis Drieghe ORCID iD

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