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Societies are confronted with significant and complex global challenges such as pandemics, climate change and the biodiversity crisis, which call for citizens’ better understanding of scientific information and its use in everyday decision-making. To narrow the gap between scientific knowledge and the public’s perceptions and everyday actions we need to know more about the factors that impact interest and positive attitudes toward science as well as understanding and acceptance of scientific information. Science capital, a concept that extends the bourdieusian notions of social and cultural capital to science, has been proposed to be an important factor in how people can understand and interact with science in their daily lives. In the present study, we examined science capital by conducting a population survey among Finnish adults. Participants (N=1,572) answered to 37 items concerning different aspects of science capital in addition to background questions of age, gender, education, and parental education. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the science capital items formed four factors: visiting science-related places, science attitudes, science-related self-efficacy, and experienced early support to study science. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the four-factor solution. The results of structural equation models showed that older respondents had lower levels of science-related self-efficacy, they had experienced less early support, and showed more negative attitudes toward science than younger respondents. Higher education as well as higher parental education were associated with higher science capital across the four factors. Interestingly, age and education were stronger predictors of science-related self-efficacy and experienced early encouragement for men than for women, and mother’s education had a weaker association to science-related self-efficacy for men than for women. The present results shed new light to the concept of science capital and provide pointers for developing science-teaching interventions and policies that increase the acceptance and use of scientific information in society.

Eye-tracking studies have shown that readers reread ironic phrases when resolving their meaning. Moreover, it has been shown that the time-course of processing ironic meaning is affected by readers working memory capacity (WMC). Irony is context-dependent phenomena but using traditional eye-movement measures it is difficult analyze processing beyond sentence-level. A promising method to study individual differences in irony processing at the paragraph-level is scanpath analysis. In the present experiment, we analyzed whether individual differences in WMC are reflected in scanpaths during reading ironic stories by combining data from two previous eye-tracking studies (N=120). The results revealed three different reading strategies: linear reading, and strategic and non-selective rereading. The readers predominantly used linear strategy for ironic and literal stories. However, the reading strategy for ironic stories were affected by comprehension and WMC. Results showed that scanpaths captured differences missed by standard measures, showing it to be a valuable tool to study individual differences in irony processing.

Theoretical models of irony comprehension pose different hypotheses about the time course of resolving ironic interpretation of an utterance, and they propose several context-, phrase-, and reader-related factors that influence the ease or difficulty of processing irony. In recent years, these factors have been examined using eye tracking, which allows a detailed analysis of time course of reading processes. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of the eye-tracking studies on irony and then present a systematic review of the factors that have been shown to influence the time course of irony processing. The review will point to future directions in how eye tracking could best be applied to further develop the current theoretical views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

In our current era, learners are confronted with many and varying sources of information, such as news media, books, websites, social media, scientific articles, communicative interactions, and mor...

The aim of the present study was to examine effects of relevance instructions and elaborative interrogation on the processing of and memory for expository texts. Eye movements of 132 undergraduate students were tracked while they read expository texts. After reading each text, they produced an oral summary. Participants were divided into four experimental conditions that differed by the presence or absence of the why question and the specific or general relevance instruction they received. Results showed that readers who received the why question embedded in the texts and also received the specific instruction of answering the question demonstrated more strategic reading, as reflected in their first-pass and look-back reading times and also in their better recall of question-relevant information. These results can be readily applied to real-life learning contexts, as they suggest that employing specific relevance instructions in combination with elaborative interrogation may elicit more efficient and strategic reading., El objetivo del presente estudio fue examinar el efecto de las Instrucciones de relevancia y de Interrogación elaborativa en el procesamiento y el posterior recuerdo de textos expositivos. A tal fin se registraron los movimientos oculares de 132 estudiantes universitarios mientras leían textos expositivos. Después de leer cada texto, realizaron un resumen oral del mismo. Se asignó a los participantes a cuatro condiciones experimentales que se diferenciaban por la presencia o ausencia de una pregunta de tipo “por qué” y la instrucción específica o general de relevancia que recibieron. Los resultados mostraron que los lectores que recibieron la pregunta de tipo “por qué” insertada en los textos y que también recibieron la instrucción específica de contestar a la pregunta mostraron unos patrones de lectura más estratégicos, como quedó reflejado en sus tiempos de lectura inicial y de refijaciones y también en su mejor recuerdo de la información relacionada con la pregunta. Estos resultados pueden aplicarse fácilmente a contextos reales de aprendizaje, ya que sugieren que emplear instrucciones específicas de relevancia en combinación con interrogación elaborativa puede facilitar y potenciar estilos de lectura más eficientes y estratégicos, The work reported in this manuscript was supported by Grant PSI2013-47219-P from the Ministry of Economic and Competitiveness (MINECO) of Spain

In this commentary to the Special Issue of Educational Psychology Review on visual perceptual processes, I tie the empirical studies reported in the issue with previous research in other domains to offer some points to be considered in future studies. First, I will point out to issues related to the operationalization of the theoretical constructs. The empirical papers in this Special Issue use eye tracking to study students’ engagement, teachers’ expertise, and student-teacher interaction. However, it is not always clear how the observed eye movement patterns reflect these theoretical concepts and the underlying psychological processes. Second, I will reflect on the analyses of the eye movement data presented in the papers. The main advantage of the methodology is that it can provide detailed information about the time-course of processing, and to fully engage its potential, it should be complemented with adequate statistical methods. In my view, the papers in this Special Issue provide valuable novel information about the complex processes underlying learning in variable contexts, and offer an excellent starting point for future research.

We examined the effectiveness of direct and indirect advertising. Direct ads openly depict advertised products and brands. In indirect ads, the ad message requires elaboration. Eye movements were recorded while consumers viewed direct and indirect advertisements under fixed (5 s) or unlimited exposure time. Recognition of ads, brand logos and preference for brands were tested under two different delays (after 24 h or 45 min) from the ad exposure. The total viewing time was longer for the indirect ads when exposure time was unlimited. Overall, ad pictorials received more fixations and the brand preference was higher in the indirect condition. Recognition improved for brand logos of indirect ads when tested after the shorter delay. Consumers experienced indirect ads as more original, surprising, intellectually challenging and harder to interpret than direct ads. Current results indicate that indirect ads elicit cognitive elaboration that translates into higher preference and memorability for brands.

We introduce a database (IDEST) of 250 short stories rated for valence, arousal, and comprehensibility in two languages. The texts, with a narrative structure telling a story in the first person and controlled for length, were originally written in six different languages (Finnish, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish), and rated for arousal, valence, and comprehensibility in the original language. The stories were translated into English, and the same ratings for the English translations were collected via an internet survey tool (N = 573). In addition to the rating data, we also report readability indexes for the original and English texts. The texts have been categorized into different story types based on their emotional arc. The texts score high on comprehensibility and represent a wide range of emotional valence and arousal levels. The comparative analysis of the ratings of the original texts and English translations showed that valence ratings were very similar across languages, whereas correlations between the two pairs of language versions for arousal and comprehensibility were modest. Comprehensibility ratings correlated with only some of the readability indexes. The database is published in osf.io/9tga3, and it is freely available for academic research.

Individually tailored vaccine hesitancy interventions are considered auspicious for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. In two studies, we measured self-reported format preference for statistical vs. anecdotal information in vaccine hesitant individuals, and experimentally manipulated the format in which COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy interventions were presented (statistical vs. anecdotal). Regardless of whether people received interventions that were in line with their format preference, the interventions did not influence their vaccine attitudes or vaccination intentions. Instead, a stronger preference for anecdotal information was associated with perceiving the material in both the statistical and the anecdotal interventions as more frustrating, less relevant, and less helpful. However, even if the participants reacted negatively to both intervention formats, the reactions to the statistical interventions were consistently less negative. These results suggest that tailoring COVID-19 and influenza vaccine hesitancy interventions to suit people’s format preference, might not be a viable tool for decreasing vaccine hesitancy. The results further imply that using statistics-only interventions with people who hold anti-vaccination attitudes may be a less risky choice than using only anecdotal testimonies.

The role of individual differences during dynamic scene viewing was explored. Participants (N=38) watched a gameplay video of a first-person shooter (FPS) videogame while their eye movements were recorded. In addition, the participants’ skills in three visual attention tasks (attentional blink, visual search, and multiple object tracking) were assessed. The results showed that individual differences in visual attention tasks were associated with eye movement patterns observed during viewing of the gameplay video. The differences were noted in four eye movement measures: number of fixations, fixation durations, saccade amplitudes and fixation distances from the center of the screen. The individual differences showed during specific events of the video as well as during the video as a whole. The results highlight that an unedited, fast-paced and cluttered dynamic scene can bring about individual differences in dynamic scene viewing.

Mental health problems like anxiety, depression, and stress have been increasing in many countries and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated their toll. Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to provide evidence-based treatments for anxiety and depression, and accumulating evidence is emerging in support of using mindfulness apps yielding small-to-moderate treatment effects. The study was a 4-week randomized controlled trial with 561 university students and staff as participants, divided into a treatment group (mindfulness app) and an active control group (psychoeducational online content). Depression, anxiety, and stress were evaluated as primary study outcomes. Saliva cortisol samples were also collected from a subgroup of the treatment arm (n = 29). Using the mindfulness app for four weeks resulted in small reductions in stress (d = .16), and depression (d = .16). Attrition was 28.0%. Subjects who practiced more did not experience additional improvement in wellbeing. Mindfulness apps offer modest but clear benefits to users in terms of improved mental health. They present a promising supplement to traditional mental health services.

Video stream: https://vimeo.com/358415199 Despite a wealth of studies using eye tracking to investigate mental processes during vision or reading, the investigation of oculomotor activity during natural reading of longer texts –be it newspaper articles, narratives or poetry– is still an exception in this field (as evidenced by the program of ECEM 2017 in Wuppertal). Following up on our symposium at ECEM 2017, here we bring together eye movement research on natural text reading to report recent progress in a coordinated way sharing data, experiences and software skills in this highly complex subfield. More specifically, in this symposium we will address several challenges faced by an eye tracking perspective on the reading of longer texts which involve a surplus of intervening variables and novel methods to analyze the data. In particular, the following issues will be addressed: - Which text-analytical and statistical methods are best to deal with the myriad of surface and affective semantic features potentially influencing eye movements during reading of ‘natural’ texts? - What are the pros and cons of using machine learning assisted predictive modeling as an alternative to the standard GLM/LMM frameworks? - Which kind of theoretical models can deal with the level of complexity offered by reading longer natural texts?

Dear Readers,We are delighted and honored to serve as the new coeditors for Discourse Processes. The journal and the Society for Text and Discourse have played critical roles in our professional li...

International audience; The present study utilised a novel combination of eye movement and motion capture recordings to examine cognitive engagement during reading on a hand-held tablet computer. Participants read a multiple-page text with a specific task in mind and after reading recalled the main contents of text from memory. The results showed that head distance from screen was slightly shorter, and readers spent longer time reading task-relevant than irrelevant segments of text and had better memory for task-relevant than irrelevant text information, indicating that there are task-induced momentary changes in engagement during reading. Moreover, head motion and individual fixation durations decreased during the course of reading of relevant segments, and even though there was an overall increase in table motion during reading, the slope of this increase was steeper for irrelevant than relevant text segments. These results suggest that readers become more engaged with relevant and less engaged with irrelevant text segments across the text. The novel methodological combination of eye and postural movements seems to provide valuable information about cognitive engagement during reading in digital environments. The cumulation of evidence from this and previous studies suggests that reading on a tablet affords different interactions between the reader and the text than reading on a computer screen. Reading on a tablet might be more similar to reading on paper, and this may impact the attentional processes during reading.

Very little is known about the processes underlying second language (L2) speakers’ understanding of written metaphors and similes. Moreover, most of the theories on figurative language comprehension do not consider reader-related factors. In the study, we used eye-tracking to examine how native Finnish speakers (N = 63) read written English nominal metaphors (“education is a stairway”) and similes (“education is like a stairway”). Identical topic–vehicle pairs were used in both conditions. After reading, participants evaluated familiarity of each pair. English proficiency was measured using the Bilingual-language Profile Questionnaire and the Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English. The results showed that readers were more likely to regress within metaphors than within similes, indicating that processing metaphors requires more processing effort than processing similes. The familiarity of a metaphor and L2 English proficiency modulated this effect. The results are discussed in the light of current theories on figurative language processing.

Syllabification by hyphens (e.g., hy-phen-a-tion) is a standard procedure in early Finnish reading instruction. However, recent findings indicate that hyphenation slows down children’s reading already during the first grade (Haikio, Hyona, & Bertram, 2015, 2016). In the present study, it was examined whether this slowdown is indicative of deeper processing and/or more strategic reading. To this end, 2nd grade children (N = 36) read short expository and narrative stories while their eye movements were registered. The presence of syllable boundary cue (SBC) was manipulated; for half of the stories, each word was hyphenated at syllable boundaries whereas the other half included no hyphenation. After each story, story comprehension (SC) was measured by three types of oral questions, namely free recall, cued recall, and true/false questions. With regard to reading behavior, SBC interacted with independently measured reading comprehension scores for both forward and regressive fixation times during first pass sentence reading. Hyphenation slowed down reading of good comprehenders to a larger extent than weaker comprehenders in comparison to nonhyphenated condition, especially for regressive fixation times. With respect to SC, cued recall scores were lower in the hyphenated than in the nonhyphenated condition. There was no effect of SBC in free recall or true/false questions. Hyphenation seems to promote phonological encoding even when readers might want to access words via orthographic codes, which are obscured by hyphenation, especially at the whole-word level. This more piecemeal reading style then makes it harder to integrate the pieces into a bigger whole, affecting not only reading speed but also reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)

Previous eye-tracking studies suggest that when resolving the meaning of sarcastic utterances in a text, readers often initiate fixations that return to the sarcastic utterance from subsequent parts of the text. We used a modified trailing mask paradigm to examine both the role of these look-back fixations in sarcasm comprehension and whether there are individual differences in how readers resolve sarcasm. Sixty-two adult participants read short paragraphs containing either a literal or a sarcastic utterance while their eye movements were recorded. The texts were presented using a modified trailing mask paradigm: sentences were initially masked with a string of x's and were revealed to the reader one at a time. In the normal reading condition, sentences remained visible on the screen when the reader moved on to the next sentence; in the masked condition, the sentences were replaced with a mask. Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and the processing of emotional information were also measured. The results showed that readers adjusted their reading behavior when a mask prevented them from re-examining the text content. Interestingly, the readers' compensatory strategies depended on spatial WMC. Moreover, the results showed that the ability to process emotional information was related to less processing effort invested in resolving sarcasm. The present study suggests that look-backs are driven by a need to re-examine the text contents but that they are not necessary for the successful comprehension of sarcasm. The strategies used to resolve sarcasm are mediated by individual differences.

Previous research on how stereotypes affect perceptions of intimate partner violence and domestic homicide has found that violence committed by men is perceived as more severe and judged more harshly than violence committed by women. The present mock jury study investigated how perpetrator sex (male or female), crime type (familicide or filicide), and relatedness between perpetrator and child victims (biological or step) affect laypeople’s perceptions of the appropriate consequence of the crime, the reason for the offense, responsibility of the perpetrator, the likelihood of certain background factors being present, and the risk of future violence. One hundred sixty-seven university students read eight fictive descriptions of cases of multiple-victim domestic homicides, in which the sex of the perpetrator, the crime type, and the relatedness between the perpetrator and the child victims were manipulated. We found that participants recommended equally severe punishments to and placed the same amount of responsibility on male and female offenders. Female offenders were, however, regarded as mentally ill to a larger extent and perceived more likely to have been victims of domestic violence compared with male offenders. Male offenders were seen as more likely to have committed domestic violence in the past, having been unemployed, have substance abuse, hold aggressive attitudes, and commit violent acts in the future. Participants also perceived offenders killing biological children as more mentally ill than those killing stepchildren. The present study extends the literature on the possible effect of stereotypes on decision making in psychiatric and judicial contexts.

The present aim was to investigate emotion-related physiological responses and subjective ratings of two groups of active gamers (N = 24) in response to both playing and watching a video of a first-person shooter game. Participants of one group had high preferences for game dynamics in first-person shooter games, whereas the other group disliked such dynamics. Electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate (HR), and electromyographic (EMG) activity of the corrugator supercilii (i.e., brow furrowing) and the zygomaticus major (i.e., smiling) muscles were measured while playing and watching a gameplay video. After the playing and watching sessions, the participants rated their experienced level of valence and arousal. The results showed that those who liked the game dynamics showed comparable and stable levels of EDA and HR during both playing and watching. Those who disliked the game dynamics showed overall higher levels of EDA and HR during playing than watching a video, and a rising EDA tendency especially during watching a video. Playing evoked overall higher corrugator supercilii activity than watching in both groups. The group that liked the game dynamics showed a steep EMG increase in the activity of the corrugator supercilii, whereas the group that disliked the game dynamics showed less EMG increase. As for ratings of valence and arousal, both groups reported more positive valence and higher arousal after playing than after watching a video, and there were no differences between the groups. In sum, the results showed that player preferences were associated with players’ emotion-related physiological responses. The results also showed that playing as opposed to watching generated higher autonomic arousal, but only for players who disliked the dynamics of the game. publishedVersion

In this study, we examine digital game preferences by identifying game dynamics, i.e. player-game interaction modes, of 700 contemporary digital games, and players' N = 1717 desire to play games with specific types of dynamics. Based on statistical analysis of the data, 5 game dynamics preference categories "assault," "manage," "journey," "care," and "coordinate" and 7 player types were revealed. The results show that identifying player types requires including both preferred and undesired game dynamics categories in the analysis. The findings unveil digital gaming as a more multifaceted phenomenon than common stereotypes suggest. The original game preferences model we present in this study can be conceptualized as a complementary approach for motivations to play and player behavior studies.

While many studies have focused on eyewitness’ perception and memory, few studies on earwitness’ ability to understand and remember complex sound events have been conducted. The present study included 73 participants and explored whether it is possible for children and adults to understand and later recall a complex sound event. The aim was to resolve an evidentiary issue in a trial concerning a 7-year-old child’s earwitness testimony and whether is it possible to understand a complex sound environment based solely on aural perception. The participants listened to a recording that replicated the aurally perceived situation described by the child witness in his testimony. The results showed, that adults and children could identify only a few, familiar sounds of the 16 sounds presented in free recall. They recognized the correct sounds poorly (51.9% vs. chance level of 50%): significantly better than chance only if the retention interval was immediate and the sounds could be heard clearly (57.5%). T...

Comprehension and summarizing are closely related. As more strategic and selective processing during reading should be reflected in higher quality of summaries, the aim of this study was to use eye movement patterns to analyze how readers who produce good quality summaries process texts. 40 undergraduate students were instructed to read six expository texts in order to respond a causal question introduced in the end of the first paragraph. After reading, participants produced an oral summary of the text. Based on the quality of the summaries, participants were divided into three groups: High, Medium and Low Quality Summaries. The results revealed that readers who produced High Quality Summaries made significantly more and longer fixations and regressions in the question-relevant parts of texts when compared to the other two summary groups. These results suggest that the summary task performance could be a good predictor of the reading strategies utilized during reading.

Prior research shows that increased distance and decreased light result in less correct eyewitness identifications, yet their combined effect is not well understood. The aim of the present study was to establish the maximum distance in low lux (lx) where an eyewitness’s later identification in target present (TP) line-ups is no longer reliable. We randomized participants (N = 178) into one of three lx conditions (high:300 lx, medium:10 lx, low:0.7 lx) and presented them with eight targets (one at a time) at eight separate distances (6–20 m). Each target-presentation was followed by an 8-person simultaneous TP line-up (i.e., there was a .125 probability of choosing the target correctly by chance). We found that the rate of correct TP identifications decreased with increased distance in all lx conditions. At 20 m the rate of correct TP identifications was .53 in the high lx condition, .41 in the medium lx condition and .11 in the low lx condition. The generalizability of our findings to overall eyewitness accuracy is limited by the exclusion of target absent line-ups, yet our findings show that reliable and correct target present identifications are very unlikely following observations made in low lighting (0.7 lx) at 20 m.

The present chapter is a brief introduction to research on eye movements during reading. In the chapter, we will describe what the eye movement methodology has revealed about word recognition, syntactic parsing of sentences, and comprehension of longer segments of text. The typical eye movement pattern in reading is one where the reader makes a sequence of left to right eye movements from one word to the next so that most words are fixated at least once. Words that typically do not receive a fixation are short, high-frequency function words, such as articles and prepositions. Fixation time spent on individual words and larger text units can then be used to tap into the cognitive processes that make reading possible. A wealth of data has been accumulated on using fixation time measures to investigate word recognition processes during reading. These studies have shown that fixation times reliably reflect the underlying mental processes ongoing during fixations on words. It has been shown, among other things, that orthographic, phonological and semantic features all influence the time spent fixating a word. This also applies to developing readers, who differ from mature readers in making more and longer fixations, shorter saccades and more regressions. The differences in eye movement patterns between developing and mature readers are primarily explained by lexical processing efficiency, not by low-level oculomotor factors. Eye movements have also been used to study processing of non-foveal text information. This is referred to as parafoveal word processing. Here the interesting questions are how far to the periphery useful information can be extracted and what kind of information can be gleaned from words around the fixated word. It has been found that the readers’ perceptual span is strongly biased toward the reading direction, that is, to the right when reading from left to right. Developing readers have smaller perceptual span than proficient readers. Adult readers extract parafoveally visual, orthographic and phonological information from the word to the right of the fixated word. Recent evidence suggests that they are also capable of extracting parafoveally semantic information concerning word meanings. Developmental studies of parafoveal word processing are just beginning to accrue. In the study of sentence parsing, that is, assigning a syntactic structure to a sentence, eye-tracking has become the gold standard. Having reliable and sensitive measures of the timing of effects is pertinent in testing predictions derived from different competing theories of sentence parsing. That sentences (and clauses) are regarded as processing units is demonstrated by the sentence wrap-up effect. Readers pause for longer time at sentence-final words before proceeding to the next sentence, presumably in order to integrate the words into a coherent sentence meaning. Eye movement studies of sentence parsing have demonstrated that parsing takes place incrementally as readers proceed through the sentence. Syntactic ambiguity, syntactic complexity and syntactic violations, among other things, have been shown to influence the eye movement patterns during sentence comprehension. Reading texts longer than single sentences has been the least researched area in the study of eye movements during reading. However, with the help of eye fixation measures developed to study global text processing, eye movement studies on text comprehension have recently been gaining increased popularity. To date, eye fixation patterns have been used to study how readers construct and update a mental representation of the text contents. For example, studies have been conducted on how readers solve inconsistencies in text and comprehend ironic statements. Moreover, research has shown that the reading goal has pervasive effects on eye movements during reading. Among other things, readers make more and longer fixations when reading text segments relevant to their reading goal. Also developing readers are capable of using a reading goal to adjust their intake of text information as they proceed through the text.

According to certain player typologies, players report preferring some game dynamics more than others [1]. However, it is unclear whether these self-reported preferences show carryover effects during actual playing. For instance, do players who report liking dynamics of killing and shooting show positive emotions during playing games that incorporate such elements? We recruited active gamers (N = 24) and divided them into two groups: those who preferred and those who disliked aggressive game dynamics. In the experiment, both groups played a first person shooter game as well as watched a video of someone else playing the game. We recorded psychophysiological responses for facial muscle activation, electrodermal activity and heartbeat to explore the participants’ emotional valence and arousal states during playing and watching. The results indicate that the groups did not differ in their emotional responses, suggesting that self-reported playing preferences may not be an accurate way to measure actual emotional responses during playing. The results also illustrate that gaming seems to affect players in a similar way regardless of their self-reported likes and preferences. Furthermore, the results showed that actual playing induces more positive and negative emotions (as indexed by smiling and frowning) than watching someone else play, and is emotionally more arousing.

Purpose To establish potential markers of visual expertise in eye movement (EM) patterns of early residents, advanced residents, and specialists who interpret abdominal computed tomography (CT) studies. Materials and Methods The institutional review board approved use of anonymized CT studies as research materials and to obtain anonymized eye-tracking data from volunteers. Participants gave written informed consent. Early residents (n = 15), advanced residents (n = 14), and specialists (n = 12) viewed 26 abdominal CT studies as a sequence of images at either 3 or 5 frames per second while EMs were recorded. Data were analyzed by using linear mixed-effects models. Results Early residents' detection rate decreased with working hours (odds ratio, 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.73, 0.91; P = .001). They detected less of the low visual contrast (but not of the high visual contrast) lesions (45% [13 of 29]) than did specialists (62% [18 of 29]) (odds ratio, 0.39; 95% CI: 0.25, 0.61; P < .001) or advanced residents (56% [16 of 29]) (odds ratio, 0.55; 95% CI: 0.33, 0.93; P = .024). Specialists and advanced residents had longer fixation durations at 5 than at 3 frames per second (specialists: β = .01; 95% CI: .004, .026; P = .008; advanced residents: β = .04; 95% CI: .03, .05; P < .001). In the presence of lesions, saccade lengths of specialists shortened more than those of advanced (β = .02; 95% CI: .007, .04; P = .003) and of early residents (β = .02; 95% CI: .008, 0.04; P = .003). Irrespective of expertise, high detection rate correlated with greater reduction of saccade length in the presence of lesions (β = -.10; 95% CI: -.16, -.04; P = .002) and greater increase at higher presentation speed (β = .11; 95% CI: .04, .17; P = .001). Conclusion Expertise in CT reading is characterized by greater adaptivity in EM patterns in response to the demands of the task and environment. © RSNA, 2016 Online supplemental material is available for this article.

Is inferring readers' literacy skills possible by analyzing their eye movements during text reading? This study used Support Vector Machines (SVM) to analyze eye movement data from 61 undergraduate students who read a multiple-paragraph, multiple-topic expository text. Forward fixation time, first-pass rereading time, second-pass fixation time, and regression path reading time on different regions of the text were provided as features. The SVM classification algorithm assisted in distinguishing high-literacy-skilled readers from low-literacy-skilled readers with 80.3 % accuracy. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of combining eye tracking and machine learning techniques to detect readers with low literacy skills, and suggest that such approaches can be potentially used in predicting other cognitive abilities.

In this study, we used eye-tracking methodology for deeper understanding of the refutation text effect on online text comprehension. A refutation text acknowledges the reader's alternative conceptions about a phenomenon, refutes them and presents the correct conceptions. We tested two hypotheses about its facilitation effect: the coherence hypothesis (refutation text is more coherent than standard text, thus facilitating comprehension) and the elaboration hypothesis (refutation text involves deeper processing, thus facilitating comprehension). Forty university students read one refutation text and one non-refutation text about two science topics. Offline data confirmed that refutation text readers recall more scientific facts than non-refutation text readers. Online eye-tracking measures revealed both an increase and a decrease in reading time in response to the refutation statements. Topic-medial text sentences with the correct science facts were fixated for a shorter time when first encountered in the refutation text. Refutation statements, however, increased integrative processing at the end of each text paragraph, as indexed by longer look-back fixation times on topic-final sentences with the science concepts, as well as longer look-back fixation times directed to the refutation statements. These findings support the elaboration hypothesis and are discussed in the light of current accounts of the refutation effect for theory development and educational practice.

Prior research shows that increased distance and decreased light result in less correct eyewitness identifications, yet their combined effect is unknown. The aim of the present study was to establish the maximum distance in low lux (lx) where an eyewitness’s later identification in target present (TP) line-ups is no longer reliable. We randomized participants (N = 178) into one of three lx conditions (high:300lx, medium:10lx, low:0.7lx) and presented them with eight targets (one at a time) at eight separate distances (6-20 meters). Each target-presentation was followed by an 8-person simultaneous TP line-up (i.e., there was a .125 probability of choosing the target correctly by chance). We found that the rate of correct TP identifications decreased with increased distance in all lx conditions. At 20 meters the rate of correct TP identifications was .53 in the high lx condition, .41 in the medium lx condition and .11 in the low lx condition. The generalizability of our findings to overall eyewitness accuracy is limited by the exclusion of target absent line-ups, yet our findings show that reliable and correct target present identifications are very unlikely following observations made in low lighting (0.7 lx) at 20 meters.

In a single eye movement experiment, we investigated the effects of context on the time course of local and global anomaly processing during reading in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In one condition, short paragraph texts contained anomalous target words. Detection of the anomaly was only possible through evaluation of word meaning in relation to the global context of the whole paragraph ( Passage-Level Anomalies). In another condition, the anomaly could be detected via computation of a local thematic violation within a single sentence embedded in the paragraph ( Sentence-Level Anomalies). For the sentence-level anomalies, the ASD group, in contrast with the typically developing (TD) group, showed early detection of the anomaly as indexed by regressive eye movements from the critical target word upon fixation. Conversely, for the passage-level anomalies, and in contrast with the ASD group, the TD group showed early detection of the anomaly with increased regressive eye movements once the critical word had been fixated. The reversal of the pattern of regression path data for the two groups, for the sentence- and passage-level anomalies, is discussed in relation to cognitive accounts of ASD.