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PISA results show that a considerable number of 15-year-old pupils after 8 to 10 years of schooling have a low level of functional reading literacy, as defined in the PISA framework. While PISA results help identify the level of reading competency, they do not reveal what might be the reasons why some students fail to solve the tasks. One way to explore the difficulties students encounter while solving PISA reading tasks is to track their eye movements during reading. The main aim of this study was to explore the similarities and differences in eye movement patterns between students with high and low scores on PISA reading tasks. A sample of 92 students took part in the pre-test, which was based on PISA items, and administered to identify groups of students with high and low PISA reading scores. Based on student pre-test results, 20 students were selected for the main, eye-tracking test--10 participants with low scores and 10 with high scores. The eye-tracking test consisted of four different released PISA reading tasks, three of them continuous and one non-continuous. The continuous items were followed by one multiple-choice question each at L1, L2, and L3 levels of difficulty. The non-continuous text was followed by three multiple-choice questions (also L1-L3). Three main findings were the following: regarding saccadic amplitudes, the reading was found to be less fluent for the low-skilled group; according to the heat maps, they had difficulty finding the relevant material; and taking into account standard deviations of eye-tracking measures, the variability was found to be larger in this group. Taken together, the findings of this study show that the PISA results differentiating low- and high-scoring groups go hand in hand with insights from more fine-grained eye-tracking measurements.

The eye-tracking method was used to assess the influence of detailed, colorful illustrations on reading behaviors and learning outcomes. Based on participants' subjective ratings in a pre-study, we selected eight one-page human anatomy lessons. In the main study, participants learned these eight human anatomy lessons; four were accompanied by detailed illustrations, and the other four were accompanied by simplified illustrations. Participants completed a comprehension test and an evaluation questionnaire after reading each lesson. The results showed that detailed and simplified illustrations were equally effective in terms of learning outcomes. Eye-tracking data indicated that the detailed illustrations attracted attention in the initial learning stage and received more visual attention during the overall learning process. Notably, correlation analysis revealed that spending a greater proportion of time re-inspecting the simplified illustration was associated with higher test performances. By contrast, greater proportion of time spent re-inspecting the detailed illustration was not significantly correlated with learning outcomes. The results suggest that detailed illustrations could influence the learning process, and may support learning differently compared with simplified illustrations.

An eye-tracking study with 60 native Swedish speakers (18-30 years) was conducted to investigate the positive effects on learning outcomes predicted by the disfluency effect. Subtle low-pass filtering was used as a disfluency manipulation and compared with a control condition using regular text. The text was presented on four separate text presentation screens (TPSs), and eye movements were recorded. A free recall task was given 25 min later, and working memory capacity (WMC) was assessed to test if it would moderate learning outcomes. The disfluency manipulation had no effect on learning outcomes, total reading times on words or lines, first- or second-pass reading on lines, or average fixation durations. Moreover, the disfluency effect was not moderated by students' WMC or self-reported prior knowledge of the topic. However, an adaptation to the disfluency manipulation was found. Total reading times on both words and lines were shorter in TPS 1 and 2 in the disfluency condition compared with the control condition, whereas reading times were longer in TPS 3 and 4. It is discussed if failures to replicate the disfluency effect arise from material features, with positive adaptations to disfluency (i.e., higher effort investment) possibly requiring more comprehensive materials.

Current debate in mental imagery research revolves around the perceptual and cognitive role of eye movements to "nothing" (Ferreira, Apel, & Henderson, 2008; Richardson, Altmann, Spivey, & Hoover, 2009). While it is established that eye movements are comparable when inspecting a scene (or hearing a scene description) as when visualizing it from memory (Johansson, Holsanova, & Holmqvist, 2006), the exact purpose of these eye movements remains elusive. Are eye movements during recall purely epiphenomenal or do they have a functional purpose? Here we address this question in four experiments where eye movements were prohibited either during the encoding or recall phases. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that maintaining central fixation during visual or auditory encoding, respectively, had no effect on how eye movements were executed during recall (but it did hinder memory retrieval). Thus, oculomotor events during recall are not reinstatements of those produced during encoding. When fixation was restricted during recall, Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that scene recollection was altered and impaired, irrespective of the modality of encoding. The functional role of eye movements during mental visualization is therefore apparent in this perturbation of visuospatial capabilities. (Contains 5 tables and 19 figures.)

Complex perceptual tasks, like clinical reasoning based on visual observations of patients, require not only conceptual knowledge about diagnostic classes but also the skills to visually search for symptoms and interpret these observations. However, medical education so far has focused very little on how visual observation skills can be efficiently conveyed to novices. The current study applied a novel instructional method to teach these skills by showing the learners how an expert model visually searches and interprets symptoms (i.e., eye-movement modelling examples; EMMEs). Case videos of patients were verbally explained by a model (control condition) and presented to students. In the experimental conditions, the participants received a recording of the model's eye movements superimposed on the case videos. The eye movements were displayed by either highlighting the features the model focused on with a circle (the circle condition) or by blurring the features the model did not focus on (the spotlight condition). Compared to the other two conditions, results show that a spotlight on the case videos better guides the students' attention towards the relevant features. Moreover, when testing the students' clinical reasoning skills with videos of new patient cases without any guidance, participants studying EMMEs with a spotlight showed improved their visual search and enhanced interpretation performance of the symptoms in contrast to participants in either the circle or the control condition. These findings show that a spotlight EMME can successfully convey clinical reasoning based on visual observations.

In the present study 24 university students read four different texts in four conditions: (1) while listening to music they preferred to listen to while studying; (2) while listening to music they did not prefer to listen to while studying; (3) while listening to a recording of noise from a cafe; and finally (4) in silence. After each text they took a reading-comprehension test. Eye movement data were recorded for all participants in all conditions. A main effect for the reading-comprehension scores revealed that the participants scored significantly lower after they had been listening to the non-preferred music while reading, compared with reading in silence. No significant effects were found between the other conditions. No significant differences between conditions were found for the traditional eye movement measures in reading (fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, regressions, and first-pass and second-pass reading time). It is suggested that this result is a consequence of participants not being aware that their reading processes are disrupted by a non-preferred musical background. They do not make the necessary changes to the processes involved in reading required to compensate for increased cognitive load. The results are discussed in relation to study/reading habits, extraversion, arousal and working memory capacity. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

Readers acquire information outside the current eye fixation. Previous research indicates that having only the fixated word available slows reading, but when the next word is visible, reading is almost as fast as when the whole line is seen. Parafoveal-on-foveal effects are interpreted to reflect that the characteristics of a parafoveal word can influence fixation on a current word. Prior studies also show that words presented to the right visual field (RVF) are processed faster and more accurately than words in the left visual field (LVF). This asymmetry results either from an attentional bias, reading direction, or the cerebral asymmetry of language processing. We used eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRP), a technique that combines eye-tracking and electroencephalography, to investigate visual field differences in parafoveal-on-foveal effects. After a central fixation, a prime word appeared in the middle of the screen together with a parafoveal target that was presented either to the LVF or to the RVF. Both hemifield presentations included three semantic conditions: the words were either semantically associated, non-associated, or the target was a non-word. The participants began reading from the prime and then made a saccade towards the target, subsequently they judged the semantic association. Between 200 and 280 ms from the fixation onset, an occipital P2 EFRP-component differentiated between parafoveal word and non-word stimuli when the parafoveal word appeared in the RVF. The results suggest that the extraction of parafoveal information is affected by attention, which is oriented as a function of reading direction. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness. This study includes 4 experiments. The first 2 experiments measured eye movements of participants looking at a blank white board. Experiment 1 monitors eye movements of participants on 2 occasions: first, when participants listened to a prerecorded spoken scene description; second, when participants were later retelling it from memory. Experiment 2 first monitored eye movements of participants as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. The second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4) replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. This method of analysis differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence) and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). The discussion relates the findings to the current debate on mental imagery.

Pupil–corneal reflection (P–CR) eye tracking has gained a prominent role in studying dog visual cognition, despite methodological challenges that often lead to lower-quality data than when recording from humans. In the current study, we investigated if and how the morphology of dogs might interfere with tracking of P–CR systems, and to what extent such interference, possibly in combination with dog-unique eye-movement characteristics, may undermine data quality and affect eye-movement classification when processed through algorithms. For this aim, we have conducted an eye-tracking experiment with dogs and humans, and investigated incidences of tracking interference, compared how they blinked, and examined how differential quality of dog and human data affected the detection and classification of eye-movement events. Our results show that the morphology of dogs' face and eye can interfere with tracking methods of the systems, and dogs blink less often but their blinks are longer. Importantly, the lower quality of dog data lead to larger differences in how two different event detection algorithms classified fixations, indicating that the results of key dependent variables are more susceptible to choice of algorithm in dog than human data. Further, two measures of the Nyström & Holmqvist (Behavior Research Methods, 42(4), 188–204, 2010) algorithm showed that dog fixations are less stable and dog data have more trials with extreme levels of noise. Our findings call for analyses better adjusted to the characteristics of dog eye-tracking data, and our recommendations help future dog eye-tracking studies acquire quality data to enable robust comparisons of visual cognition between dogs and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a review of how the various aspects of any study using an eye tracker (such as the instrument, methodology, environment, participant, etc.) affect the quality of the recorded eye-tracking data and the obtained eye-movement and gaze measures. We take this review to represent the empirical foundation for reporting guidelines of any study involving an eye tracker. We compare this empirical foundation to five existing reporting guidelines and to a database of 207 published eye-tracking studies. We find that reporting guidelines vary substantially and do not match with actual reporting practices. We end by deriving a minimal, flexible reporting guideline based on empirical research (Section "An empirically based minimal reporting guideline"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]