Eye movement analysis reveals a reader’s thought process through fixations and leaps around important or unfamiliar words as they read, which can be used in various fields such as reading education, marketing, and psychology to understand the reader’s understanding and interests and provide customized solutions.
One of the ways to reveal a reader’s thought process while reading is to analyze eye movements. By tracking a reader’s eye movements as they read, you can see how they’re comprehending the text and where they’re struggling. This can be useful in a variety of fields, including reading education, marketing, psychology, and more. This method is based on the idea that thought processes are reflected in eye movements and can be characterized.
Research on eye movements has shown that when reading, readers focus on words they find important or words they find unfamiliar. When reading, readers exhibit fixations, where their eyes are locked on a word, and leaps, which occur between fixations and leaps, which can be categorized into short leaps that move from one word to the next and long leaps that skip words. When fixations were observed, the meaning of the word was understood, but when leaps were observed, the meaning of the skipped word was not understood. The duration and number of eye fixations, as well as the length and direction of the leaps, varied according to the importance or familiarity of the words the reader thought were important or unfamiliar when reading the text. The more important or unfamiliar words the reader thought were important, the longer the fixation time. These words also had higher fixation counts and leaps that were different from the direction of the text, as the reader might go in the direction of the text and then go back and read it again. When important or unfamiliar words were followed by a series of words, the jump length was shorter, with the eyes pausing after each word.
The pattern of eye movements changes as a reader’s reading ability develops. When reading at the same reading level as before, or rereading previously read texts, the pupils do not fixate on every word, with fewer fixations and shorter fixation durations than before, and more frequent long jumps skipping words. One reason for this is that as we gain experience in learning and reading, our knowledge of the structure of texts, familiarity with words, and background knowledge increases, and as we become more aware of the purpose of reading, we are able to accurately select important words in a text. At this point, leaps to revisit previously read words to understand the context and leaps to explore the words to be read first are frequent.
In particular, eye movement analysis is an important tool for understanding the characteristics of different readers. For example, if you compare the eye movements of novice and experienced readers, you’ll find that novice readers fixate their eyes on each word, while experienced readers make longer leaps to read faster. This is a clear indicator of the difference in reading ability. A reader’s eye movements are also useful in determining how interested they are in a particular topic or piece of text. Where interest is high, fixation times are longer, leaps are shorter, and the frequency of going back and reading increases.
For example, in marketing, you can analyze consumer eye movements to evaluate the effectiveness of an ad. By understanding what parts of an ad consumers pay attention to for the longest periods of time and what elements capture their attention, you can create more effective advertising strategies. This provides important information about what design or messaging companies should use to capture consumers’ attention.
In education, such analytics can be an important resource for diagnosing and improving students’ reading skills. For example, you can observe students’ eye movements to see where they struggle and what words they pay attention to. This allows you to tailor your teaching methods and effectively improve each student’s reading skills. Eye movement analysis can also be used in marketing to understand what consumers are paying attention to in an ad or web page, allowing for more efficient design and content placement.
In conclusion, eye movement analysis is an important tool for understanding readers’ thought processes and reading skills, which can be used for personalized education, effective marketing strategies, and more. This is an area of research and development that will continue to grow and contribute to solving various problems related to reading. Analyzing eye movements will pave the way for us to better understand the inner workings of readers and provide solutions tailored to their needs.
