Eye movement data provide valuable insight into written language comprehension. It helps understand language processing at various levels of analysis within the sentence: character, syllable, word, phrase, or sentence.
Reading and language
Understanding how we read and acquire language
The study of eye movements in reading has been widely investigated for more than a century to provide insights into how people gather information. Eye tracking has become an established tool to objectively measure human language processing with important applications in linguistics and education research.
Why use eye tracking?
Eye tracking is a scientific research methodology used to understand human cognitive processes and behavioral patterns, as we perceive, process, and comprehend language.
Eye tracking insights
In educational psychology, eye tracking can prove to be a great tool to gain insights into learning behavior, cognitive load, and engagement. The results help effectively design, evaluate, and improve educational materials and learning situations.
Moreover, eye tracking methodology can be used to reveal atypical reading patterns. It provides a robust source of insight into conditions, therefore opening the possibility of an objective, unobtrusive diagnostic tool for learning difficulties such as dyslexia.
What does eye tracking data tell us?
Eye movement analysis allows for objective insight into text processing, by providing information about the duration of visual attention assigned to specific text parts at the level of phrase, word, or even character.
Eye tracking data can be used to draw valuable conclusions such as:
Skipping to read a unit may indicate ease of processing due to very high predictability in the given context.
Longer reading times may indicate confusion, or difficulty to comprehend.
Long regressions (more than 10 letter spaces back along the line or to another line) may indicate difficulty in comprehending or incorporating a unit into the previous context.
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Tobii Pro Spectrum
This high-performance research system captures gaze data at speeds up to 1200 Hz. A screen-based eye tracker for extensive research from fixation-based studies to micro-saccades.
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Tobii Pro Fusion
Screen-based eye tracker, capturing gaze data at speeds up to 250 Hz. This powerful research system supports from fixation to saccade-based research outside of the lab.
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Tobii Pro Lab
Tobii Pro Lab, our eye tracking software supporting screen-based and wearable eye trackers. Guides the researcher through the entire research workflow.
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Chin Rest
A solution to hold a participant’s head in place when conducting eye tracking experiments with Tobii Pro Spectrum and Tobii Pro Fusion eye trackers.
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New! The eye tracking starter kit
Kick-off your eye tracking research with our best-in-class hardware and software bundle.
Learn moreEye tracking and reading research in practice
Advantages of print reading over screen reading: A comparison of visual patterns, reading performance, and reading attitudes across paper, computers, and tablets
Jeong and Gweon (2021) combined Tobii Pro Glasses 3 and Tobii Pro Lab to compare readers’ visual patterns, reading performance, and reading attitudes when reading from three reading media: print, computer and tablet. The study results revealed that digital text leads to longer fixation duration and lower fixation count, suggesting a higher cognitive load compared to print reading.
Note-taking effort in video remote interpreting: effects of source speech difficulty and interpreter work experience
Kuang and Zheng (2022) used Tobii Pro Fusion and Tobii Pro Lab to investigate how speech difficulty affects interpreters’ note-taking effort. From the eye tracking data researchers inferred overt visual attention and cognitive effort spared to note-taking. The study results showed that an increase of perceived language difficulty leads to a decrease overt visual attention, while the cognitive effort was not affected.
Eye tracking analysis of code layout, crowding and dyslexia - An open data set
McChesney and colleagues (2021) combined Tobii X3-120 and Tobii Pro Lab to examine how crowding in program code affects programmers with dyslexia. The analysis of gaze behavior revealed that dyslexia does not significantly affect code reading and program comprehension.
Enabling success
Tobii offers tailored support to address research needs throughout your journey with Tobii’s eye tracking.
Tobii Funding support services
Tobii Funding support services help you improve your grant proposals for research that includes eye tracking in its methodology
Tobii Connect
Tobii Connect delivers product documentation, how-to guides, and answers to FAQs as well as access to software updates. Our customer care services help with any technical issues concerning Tobii products.
Tobii Academy
Tobii Academy our online learning platform, helping you ensure study success at every step of the way from study design to interpreting your eye tracking data.
Publications
Hou, G., & Hu, Y. (2021). Designing Combinations of Pictogram and Text Size for Icons: Effects of Text Size, Pictogram Size, and Familiarity on Older Adults’ Visual Search Performance. Human Factors, 00187208211061938.
Sümer, Ö., Bozkir, E., Kübler, T., Grüner, S., Utz, S., & Kasneci, E. (2021). FakeNewsPerception: An eye movement dataset on the perceived believability of news stories. Data in Brief, 35, 106909.
Higuchi, H., Okumura, Y., & Kobayashi, T. (2021). An eye-tracking study of letter-sound correspondence in Japanese-speaking 2- to 3-year-old toddlers. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1659.
Łuniewska, M., Wójcik, M., & Jednoróg, K. (2021). The effect of inter-letter spacing on reading performance and eye movements in typically reading and dyslexic children. Learning and Instruction, 101576.
Chitalkina, N., Bednarik, R., Puurtinen, M., & Gruber, H. (2020). When you ignore what you see: How to study proof-readers’ error in pseudocode reading. ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications, 1–5.