self-consistent estimation of mislocated fixations during reading首尾一致的估计位置固定在阅读.pdfVIP

Self-Consistent Estimation of Mislocated Fixations during Reading Ralf Engbert*, Antje Nuthmann¤ Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany During reading, we generate saccadic eye movements to move words into the center of the visual field for word processing. However, due to systematic and random errors in the oculomotor system, distributions of within-word landing positions are rather broad and show overlapping tails, which suggests that a fraction of fixations is mislocated and falls on words to the left or right of the selected target word. Here we propose a new procedure for the self-consistent estimation of the likelihood of mislocated fixations in normal reading. Our approach is based on iterative computation of the proportions of several types of oculomotor errors, the underlying probabilities for word-targeting, and corrected distributions of landing positions. We found that the average fraction of mislocated fixations ranges from about 10% to more than 30% depending on word length. These results show that fixation probabilities are strongly affected by oculomotor errors. Citation: Engbert R, Nuthmann A (2008) Self-Consistent Estimation of Mislocated Fixations during Reading. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1534. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0001534 INTRODUCTION Here we propose a computational approach to the problem of When you read these lines of text, you generate saccadic eye mislocated fixations based on experimentally observed distribu- movements with an average rate of 3 to 4 per second [1] to enable tions of landing positions. The fraction of mislocated fixations can efficient word processing in the center of the visual field (the fovea). be estimated by extrapolation of experimentally observed landing Many words are skipped during reading, so that foveal processing