Mindless reading revisited: Eye movements during reading and scanning are different

In an extension of a study by Vitu, O’Regan, Inhoff, and Topolski (1995), we compared global and local characteristics of eye movements during (1) reading, (2) the scanning of transformed text (in which each letter was replaced with a z), and (3) visual search. Additionally, we examined eye behavior with respect to specific target words of high or low frequency. Globally, the reading condition led to shorter fixations, longer saccades, and less frequent skipping of target strings than did scanning transformed text. Locally, the manipulation of word frequency affected fixation durations on the target word during reading, but not during visual search or z-string scanning. There were also more refixations on target words in reading than in scanning. Contrary to Vitu et al.’s (1995) findings, our results show that eye movements are not guided by a global strategy and local tactics, but by immediate processing demands.

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