The role of visual crowding in eye movements during reading: effects of text spacing
The role of visual crowding in eye movements during reading: effects of text spacing
Visual crowding, generally defined as the deleterious influence of clutter on visual discrimination, is a form of inhibitory interaction between nearby objects. While the role of crowding in reading has been established in psychophysics research using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms, how crowding affects additional processes involved in natural reading, including parafoveal processing and saccade targeting, remains unclear. The current study investigated crowding effects on reading via two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was a sentence-reading experiment incorporating an eye-contingent boundary change in which reader’s parafoveal processing was quantified through comparing reading times after valid or invalid information was presented in the parafovea. Letter spacing was jointly manipulated to compare how crowding affects parafoveal processing. Experiment 2 was a passage-reading experiment with a line spacing manipulation. In addition to replicating previously observed letter spacing effects on global reading parameters (i.e., more but shorter fixations with wider spacing), Experiment 1 found an interaction between preview validity and letter spacing indicating that the efficiency of parafoveal processing was constrained by crowding and visual acuity. Experiment 2 found reliable but subtle influences of line spacing. Participants had shorter fixation durations, higher skipping probabilities, and less accurate return sweeps when line spacing was increased. In addition to extending the literature on the role of crowding to reading in ecologically valid scenarios, the current results inform future research on characterizing the influence of crowding in natural reading and comparing effects of crowding across reader populations.
Eye movements, Parafoveal processing, Reading, Visual crowding
2834-2858
Chiu, Tzu-Yao
b1e76712-31b4-4d9c-a9a0-21d5ffca1bcb
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
11 October 2023
Chiu, Tzu-Yao
b1e76712-31b4-4d9c-a9a0-21d5ffca1bcb
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Chiu, Tzu-Yao and Drieghe, Denis
(2023)
The role of visual crowding in eye movements during reading: effects of text spacing.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 85 (8), .
(doi:10.3758/s13414-023-02787-1).
Abstract
Visual crowding, generally defined as the deleterious influence of clutter on visual discrimination, is a form of inhibitory interaction between nearby objects. While the role of crowding in reading has been established in psychophysics research using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms, how crowding affects additional processes involved in natural reading, including parafoveal processing and saccade targeting, remains unclear. The current study investigated crowding effects on reading via two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was a sentence-reading experiment incorporating an eye-contingent boundary change in which reader’s parafoveal processing was quantified through comparing reading times after valid or invalid information was presented in the parafovea. Letter spacing was jointly manipulated to compare how crowding affects parafoveal processing. Experiment 2 was a passage-reading experiment with a line spacing manipulation. In addition to replicating previously observed letter spacing effects on global reading parameters (i.e., more but shorter fixations with wider spacing), Experiment 1 found an interaction between preview validity and letter spacing indicating that the efficiency of parafoveal processing was constrained by crowding and visual acuity. Experiment 2 found reliable but subtle influences of line spacing. Participants had shorter fixation durations, higher skipping probabilities, and less accurate return sweeps when line spacing was increased. In addition to extending the literature on the role of crowding to reading in ecologically valid scenarios, the current results inform future research on characterizing the influence of crowding in natural reading and comparing effects of crowding across reader populations.
Text
Chiu & Drieghe (in press)
- Accepted Manuscript
Text
s13414-023-02787-1
- Version of Record
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 5 September 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 October 2023
Published date: 11 October 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This article was part of TC’s master’s dissertation. Proportion of the findings were presented as a talk at the 21st European Conference on Eye Movements, University of Leicester. Data, experimental materials, and analytic scripts are publicly available on the study’s Open Science Framework webpage: https://osf.io/8hzqc/. The two experiments reported in this study were not pre-registered.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
Keywords:
Eye movements, Parafoveal processing, Reading, Visual crowding
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 481866
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/481866
ISSN: 1943-3921
PURE UUID: 820c9c3c-2dff-4431-abf6-c1ebeb13cbcd
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 12 Sep 2023 16:31
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:14
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Tzu-Yao Chiu
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics
