Eye Fixation Patterns during Informed and Uninformed Comprehension Monitoring

Abstract

This study investigates the pattern of eye movements produced when adult readers encounter cross-sentence contradictions. Subjects read paragraphs which did or did not contain contradictions while their eye movements were being monitored. Uninformed subjects were asked to prepare to answer a question that would follow each paragraph. Informed subjects were told that the paragraphs might contain contradictions and that they were to prepare to report the contradictions and to answer a question after each paragraph. Eye fixations were categorized to indicate the frequency of different operationally defined patterns of eye movements. Analyses of the frequency of these categories provided evidence that both informed and uninformed subjects were aware of the inserted contradictions and that instructions to search for inserted errors caused readers to alter their reading behavior.

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