‘The-skipping’ revisited in French: programming saccades to skip the article ‘les’

Three experiments were performed to verify O’Regan’s (1979) [ Perception & Psychophysics, 25 (6), 501–509] finding that in reading, the eye moves further forward when going towards the word ‘THE’ than when going towards a three-letter verb. The experiments were performed in French instead of Eng...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) 2000-01, Vol.40 (18), p.2517-2531
Main Authors: Gautier, Vincent, O’Regan, J.Kevin, Le Gargasson, Jean François
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Eye movement
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Linguistics
Middle Aged
Perception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading
Saccades
Saccades - physiology
Skipping
Vision
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Summary:Three experiments were performed to verify O’Regan’s (1979) [ Perception & Psychophysics, 25 (6), 501–509] finding that in reading, the eye moves further forward when going towards the word ‘THE’ than when going towards a three-letter verb. The experiments were performed in French instead of English, and compared the plural article ‘les’ with different three-letter verbs. It was confirmed that the eye did indeed move about 1.5 letters further in the case of the article ‘les’. Further investigation of the phenomenon suggested that the effect was present even when the prior fixation duration was short: Only when prior fixation was around 200 ms or less, and additionally when the eye started from a launch position that was far from the word, was there a suggestion that the ‘les’-skipping effect disappeared.
ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/S0042-6989(00)00089-4