Where are your eyes going to look during reading? A critical evaluation of saccade targeting hypothesis

TL;DR

This paper critically evaluates the word-based saccade targeting hypothesis in reading, challenging existing evidence and proposing alternative strategies through simulations and an eye-movement experiment in Chinese reading.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative saccade targeting strategy and highlights issues with current evidence, urging further research across different writing systems.

Findings

Current evidence for the word-based account is inconclusive.

An alternative saccade targeting strategy is demonstrated.

Problems with the slope coefficient calculation are identified.

Abstract

The word-based account of saccades drawn by a central gravity of the PVL is supported by two pillars of evidences. The first is the finding of the initial fixation location on a word resembled a normal distribution (Rayner, 1979). The other is the finding of a moderate slope coefficient between the launch site and the landing site (b=0.49, see McConkie, Kerr, Reddix, & Zola, 1988). Four simulations on different saccade targeting strategies and one eye-movement experiment of Chinese reading have been conducted to evaluate the two findings. We demonstrated that the current understanding of the word-based account is not conclusive by showing an alternative strategy of the word-based account and identifying the problem with the calculation of the slope coefficient. Although almost all the computational models of eye-movement control during reading have built on the two findings, future efforts should be directed to understand the precise contribution of different saccade targeting strategies, and to know how their weighting might vary across desperate writing systems.