A comparison of eye movement measures across reading efficiency quartile groups in elementary, middle, and high school students in the U.S.

This cross-sectional study examined eye movements during reading across grades in students with differing levels of reading efficiency. Eye-movement recordings were obtained while students in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 silently read normed grade-leveled texts with demonstrated comprehension. Recordings from students in each reading rate quartile at each grade level were compared to characterize differences in reading rate, number of fixations, number of regressions, and fixation durations. Comparisons indicated that students in higher reading rate quartiles made fewer fixations and regressions per word, and had shorter fixation durations. These indices of greater efficiency were also characteristic of students in upper as compared to lower grades, with two exceptions: (a) between grades 6 and 8, fixations and regressions increased while reading rates stagnated and fixation durations continued to decline, and (b) beyond grade 6 there was relatively little growth in the reading efficiency of students in the lower two reading rate quartiles. These results suggest that declines in fixation duration across grades may in part reflect broader maturational processes, while higher fixation and regression rates may distinguish students who continue to struggle with word recognition during their high school years.

A pilot study of quality of life in German prehospital emergency care physicians

Background: Quality of life in patients represents an important area of assessment. However, attention to health professionals should be equally important. The literature on the quality of life (QOL) of emergency physicians is scarce. This pilot study investigated QOL in emergency physicians in Germany. Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study from January to June in 2015. We approached the German Association of Emergency Medicine Physicians and two of the largest recruitment agencies for emergency physicians in Germany and invited their members to participate. We used the WHO Q-BREF to obtain QOL scores in four domains that included physical, mental, social, and environmental health. Results: The 478 German emergency physicians included in the study held board certifications in general medicine (n = 40; 8.4), anesthesiology (n = 243; 50.8), surgery (n = 63; 13.2), internal medicine (n = 81; 17.0), or others (n = 51; 10.7). The women surveyed tended to report a better QOL but worse general health than the men. Regarding specific domains, women scored worse in physical health, particularly energy during everyday work (relative risk ratio RRR: 1.98 1.21–3.24). Both men and women scored worse in psychological health than general health, particularly young women. Women were also more likely to view their safety (RRR: 1.87 1.07–3.28) and living place (RRR: 2.51 1.10–5.73) as being poor than their male counterparts. Conclusion: QOL in German prehospital emergency care physicians is satisfactory for the included participants; however, there were some negative effects in the psychological health domain. This is particularly obvious in young female emergency physicians

Effects of acute alcohol intoxication on visual processing and oculomotor control

Although alcohol consumption is known to degrade performance in a variety of tasks, the exact character of alcohol induced impairments is currently not well understood. The present work examines to what extent acute alcohol intoxication impairs visual processing and oculomotor control on different processing levels. Understanding the impact of alcohol on the visual system is critical because the most important way humans navigate in and communicate with the environment is through the acquisition and processing of visual information. Virtually all complex cognitive tasks rely on visual input, obtained via the planning and execution of rapid eye movements. Within the theoretical framework of “active vision” (Findlay & Gilchrist, 2003) the traditional dissociation of perception from motor control is loosened and eye movements are regarded as ‘part and parcel’ of an integrated process of information acquisition. In order to better understand the stages at which alcohol affects oculomotor control, five paradigms were used to map alcohol effects on different hierarchically organized levels of visuomotor control and additionally two complex visual cognitive tasks were examined. On the lowest level (automatic), reflexive processes were tested using the pro saccade task. The next level (automated) incorporates implicit learning and memory processes that can influence reflexive behavior, but are still unconscious. This level was examined using the double step paradigm. The highest processing level represents voluntary modification of behavior and was studied using two versions of the anti saccade paradigm and the memory guided saccade paradigm. The two complex visual cognitive tasks were task switching and reading. Task switching requires participants to switch between two or more distinct tasks, which usually results in switch costs or benefits. Such effects are explained with the interplay of inhibition and activation and to date no study has examined effects of alcohol on performance in task switching. The sentence reading experiment offered the possibility to study visuomotor control in combination with a precisely controlled cognitive processing load in an ecologically valid everyday task. For all paradigms, participant’s performance were measured in an “alcohol” and a “no alcohol” session. A total of 62 students participated and the mean breath alcohol concentration in the “alcohol session” was 70mg%. Results indicate specific effects of alcohol on different levels of visual processing and oculomotor control. Functioning on the automatic level was intact, except for a slowing in saccade latencies. Even though alcohol is known to reduce simple reaction times, the present work could show for the first time that in comparison with higher processing levels, such a “general slowing” is less pronounced on this lower processing level. Regarding the automated level deficits with in the ability to adaptively reprogram saccades on the basis of new visual information were found under alcohol. More time is necessary to achieve the same amount of reprogramming when eye movements need to be directed to new target locations. This finding is especially important, because adaptive reprogramming is a core ingredient of effective visuomotor behavior in everyday tasks such as reading or visual search. Impairments on the voluntary processing level became apparent in hypermetric (i.e., prolonged) saccade amplitudes under alcohol, whenever a reprogramming of the initial saccade target was necessary. This effect was found under conditions that required endogenous representation as well as in situations when a visual marker was present at the target location. In addition, a small effect of alcohol on visuospatial short term memory was found. Interestingly, no alcohol related effects were found regarding inhibitory functioning. In addition, performance measures in the complex visual cognitive tasks did not differ between alcohol conditions as a result of compensatory mechanisms. Apparently, longer processing time that is available under alcohol can be used in the task switching condition to activate a task set more completely. In a similar way, the trade-off between increased fixation duration and decreased number of fixations during reading suggests that the extra processing time under alcohol can be used for linguistic processing, which in itself does not seem to be impaired. This finding is supported by the fact no interaction between alcohol and word frequency was found. In conclusion, this thesis explored the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on visual processing and oculomotor control. The carefully selected paradigms have yielded interesting findings that begin to map alcohol related impairments on different levels of oculomotor control. In addition, findings and discussions afford multiple approaches for further research that should help to achieve a deeper understanding of the effects of alcohol and its underlying mechanisms

Effects of acute alcohol intoxication on visual processing and oculomotor control

Although alcohol consumption is known to degrade performance in a variety of tasks, the exact character of alcohol induced impairments is currently not well understood. The present work examines to what extent acute alcohol intoxication impairs visual processing and oculomotor control on different processing levels. Understanding the impact of alcohol on the visual system is critical because the most important way humans navigate in and communicate with the environment is through the acquisition and processing of visual information. Virtually all complex cognitive tasks rely on visual input, obtained via the planning and execution of rapid eye movements. Within the theoretical framework of “active vision” (Findlay & Gilchrist, 2003) the traditional dissociation of perception from motor control is loosened and eye movements are regarded as ‘part and parcel’ of an integrated process of information acquisition. In order to better understand the stages at which alcohol affects oculomotor control, five paradigms were used to map alcohol effects on different hierarchically organized levels of visuomotor control and additionally two complex visual cognitive tasks were examined. On the lowest level (automatic), reflexive processes were tested using the pro saccade task. The next level (automated) incorporates implicit learning and memory processes that can influence reflexive behavior, but are still unconscious. This level was examined using the double step paradigm. The highest processing level represents voluntary modification of behavior and was studied using two versions of the anti saccade paradigm and the memory guided saccade paradigm. The two complex visual cognitive tasks were task switching and reading. Task switching requires participants to switch between two or more distinct tasks, which usually results in switch costs or benefits. Such effects are explained with the interplay of inhibition and activation and to date no study has examined effects of alcohol on performance in task switching. The sentence reading experiment offered the possibility to study visuomotor control in combination with a precisely controlled cognitive processing load in an ecologically valid everyday task. For all paradigms, participant’s performance were measured in an “alcohol” and a “no alcohol” session. A total of 62 students participated and the mean breath alcohol concentration in the “alcohol session” was 70mg%. Results indicate specific effects of alcohol on different levels of visual processing and oculomotor control. Functioning on the automatic level was intact, except for a slowing in saccade latencies. Even though alcohol is known to reduce simple reaction times, the present work could show for the first time that in comparison with higher processing levels, such a “general slowing” is less pronounced on this lower processing level. Regarding the automated level deficits with in the ability to adaptively reprogram saccades on the basis of new visual information were found under alcohol. More time is necessary to achieve the same amount of reprogramming when eye movements need to be directed to new target locations. This finding is especially important, because adaptive reprogramming is a core ingredient of effective visuomotor behavior in everyday tasks such as reading or visual search. Impairments on the voluntary processing level became apparent in hypermetric (i.e., prolonged) saccade amplitudes under alcohol, whenever a reprogramming of the initial saccade target was necessary. This effect was found under conditions that required endogenous representation as well as in situations when a visual marker was present at the target location. In addition, a small effect of alcohol on visuospatial short term memory was found. Interestingly, no alcohol related effects were found regarding inhibitory functioning. In addition, performance measures in the complex visual cognitive tasks did not differ between alcohol conditions as a result of compensatory mechanisms. Apparently, longer processing time that is available under alcohol can be used in the task switching condition to activate a task set more completely. In a similar way, the trade-off between increased fixation duration and decreased number of fixations during reading suggests that the extra processing time under alcohol can be used for linguistic processing, which in itself does not seem to be impaired. This finding is supported by the fact no interaction between alcohol and word frequency was found. In conclusion, this thesis explored the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on visual processing and oculomotor control. The carefully selected paradigms have yielded interesting findings that begin to map alcohol related impairments on different levels of oculomotor control. In addition, findings and discussions afford multiple approaches for further research that should help to achieve a deeper understanding of the effects of alcohol and its underlying mechanisms

Abstracts of the 19th European Conference on Eye Movements 2017

This document contains all abstracts of the 19th European Conference on Eye Movements, August 20-24, 2017, in Wuppertal, German

Eye movements in developing readers: From basic research to classroom application.: Parts of symposium 7 at the 20th European Conference on Eye Movements in Alicante, September 21, 2019

Video stream: https://vimeo.com/362645755 Eye-movement recording has made it possible to achieve a detailed understanding of oculomotor and cognitive behavior during reading and of changes in this behavior across the stages of reading development. Given that many students struggle to attain even basic reading skills, a logical extension of eye-movement research involves its applications in both the diagnostic and instructional areas of reading education. The focus of this symposium is on eye-movement research with potential implications for reading education. Christian Vorstius will review results from a large-scale longitudinal study that examined the development of spatial parameters in fixation patterns within three cohorts, ranging from elementary to early middle school, discussing an early development window and its potential influences on reading ability and orthography. Ronan Reilly and Xi Fan will present longitudinal data related to developmental changes in reading-related eye movements in Chinese. Their findings are indicative of increasing sensitivity to lexical predictability and sentence coherence. The authors suggest that delays in the emergence of these reading behaviors may signal early an increased risk of reading difficulty. Jochen Laubrock’s presentation will focus on perceptual span development and explore dimensions of this phenomenon with potential educational implications, such as the modulation of perceptual span in relation to cognitive load, as well as preview effects during oral and silent reading --and while reading comic books

EyeMap : a software system for visualizing and analyzing eye movement data in reading

We have developed EyeMap, a freely available software system for visualizing and analyzing eye movement data specifically in the area of reading research. As compared with similar systems, including commercial ones, EyeMap has more advanced features for text stimulus presentation, interest area extraction, eye movement data visualization, and experimental variable calculation. It is unique in supporting binocular data analysis for unicode, proportional, and nonproportional fonts and spaced and unspaced scripts. Consequently, it is well suited for research on a wide range of writing systems. To date, it has been used with English, German, Thai, Korean, and Chinese. EyeMap is platform independent and can also work on mobile devices. An important contribution of the EyeMap project is a device-independent XML data format for describing data from a wide range of reading experiments. An online version of EyeMap allows researchers to analyze and visualize reading data through a standard Web browser. This facility could, for example, serve as a front-end for online eye movement data corpora

Eye-Tracking-Based Attention Guidance in Mobile Augmented Reality Assistance Systems

Renner P, Pfeiffer T. Eye-Tracking-Based Attention Guidance in Mobile Augmented Reality Assistance Systems. In: Radach R, Deubel H, Vorstius C, Hofmann MJ, eds. Abstracts of the 19th European Conference on Eye Movements. Journal of Eye Movement Research. Vol 10. Bern; 2017: 218