Chapter 1. Garden Path

1.1 Introduction

Reading is a complicated task that most of us do with great ease. The ease with which we read is deceptive because reading is actually a very complex skill. We need subtle research methods to understand what makes us able to read. One important technical advance in the study of reading is the ability to track eye movements. Only a very small region of the back of the eye, the retina, can see sufficiently small details to allow us to read. The ability to see in small detail is called acuity. The region of the retina that has good acuity is called the fovea. The small size of the fovea and its acuity is why you have to “look at” someone or something. When you look at someone, you put the image of that person’s face on your fovea. We have to move the fovea across a page to be able to pick up sufficient details from words to be able to read. We can determine the point of focus in reading by determining what part of the word falls on the fovea. With eye tracking technology, it is possible to follow a reader as he or she reads. The current experiment will replicate a classic experiment by Carpenter and Daneman (1981) that used eye tracking to study how we build up a context of meaning to allow us to interpret words that have more than one meaning.

Carpenter, P. A., & Daneman, M. (1981). Lexical retrieval and error recovery in reading: A model based on eye fixations. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20(2), 137-160.

1.2 Experiment Setup

Figure 1.1

1.3 Instructions

You will be asked to read a short passage and then answer two questions about that passage. When the screen first comes up, you will see a rectangle with horizontal lines as shown below.

The passage you are to read is hidden under the lines. To read the passage, move your mouse over the white areas between the lines and the words of the passage will be revealed one at a time, as shown in the diagram below.

Move your mouse over all the lines to reveal all the words so you can read the passage. You can move your mouse in any order and even move the mouse back and reveal words you missed before. After you have read the passage, press the Continue button to answer two questions about the passage. You will do this for 4 passages, and then you will see your results.

1.4 Experiment

Figure 1.4

1.5 Results

Figure 1.5

1.6 Quiz