Eye movement duration, pause duration, and reading time.

Abstract

The time taken for fixational pauses plus that for eye movements yields the total reading time of any selection.Erdmann and Dodge (i) first called attention to the fact that a very large proportion of the total reading time is devoted to fixational pauses.They also found that if a printed line passed by a window at the speed of I cm. in .01sec, which is about the speed of saccadic eye movements employed in reading, one did not perceive the material well enough to read it.This led them to the conclusion that perception in reading occurs only during the fixational pauses; we do not pay attention to the visual sensations produced during the accompanying eye movements.In later studies with an improved technique, Dodge (2, 3) showed that there is no clear vision during saccadic * eye movements.He also pointed out that the unclear visual sensations received during eye movements in reading are not attended to and therefore are not perceived.Inasmuch as time of perception is fixational pause time the latter has received most of the attention in many investigations of reading.The purpose of this study 2 is twofold: (1) to furnish new data on the extent and duration of eye movements in reading; (2) to show the variation in the ratio between eye movement duration and total reading time in various kinds of material.Some of the reasons for this variation will be stressed.The first determination of velocity of saccadic eye movements was made by Volkmann (11) in 1846.His results, as * Professor Dodge was one of the subjects in both experiments. 1Not shown in table.

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