How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7-44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5 – 17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to .2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye-mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts

Using E-Z reader to examine word skipping during reading

The question of why readers sometimes skip words has important theoretical implications for our understanding of perception, cognition, and oculomotor control during reading (Drieghe, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2005). In this article, the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading (Reichle, 2011) was used to examine the behavioral consequences of word skipping on fixation durations. The simulations suggest that skipping "cost," or inflated fixation durations immediately prior to skips, is modulated by the lexical properties of the upcoming word (i.e., longer fixations before skipping infrequent and/or long words; Kliegl & Engbert, 2005) but that contrary to previous claims (e.g., Reichle & Laurent, 2006), "accidental" skips due to motor error also produce skipping cost. In contrast, the cost associated with having skipped a word was not modulated by that word's properties. These simulations suggest that skipping behavior is even more complicated than previously has been assumed and that further empirical research is needed to understand the causal link between skipping and its associated cost

Coarse-to-fine eye-movement behavior during visual search

It has previously been argued that, during visual search, eye movement behavior is indicative of an underlying scanning “strategy” that starts on a global, or “coarse,” scale but then progressively focuses to a more local, or “fine,” scale. This conclusion is motivated by the finding that, as a trial progresses, fixation durations tend to increase and saccade amplitudes tend to decrease. In the present study, we replicate these effects but offer an alternative explanation for them—that they emerge from a few stochastic factors that control eye movement behavior. We report the results of a simulation supporting this hypothesis and discuss implications for future models of visual search