EYE MOVEMENTS AS A FUNCTION OF RESPONSE CONTINGENCIES MEASURED BY BLACKOUT TECHNIQUE 1

Abstract

A program may have a low error rate but, at the same time, require little of the student and teach him little. A measure to supplement error rate in evaluating a program has recently been developed. This measure, called the blackout ratio, is the percentage of material that may be deleted without increasing the error rate. In high blackout‐ratio programs, obtaining a correct answer is contingent upon only a small portion of the item. The present study determined if such low response‐contingent material is read less thoroughly than programmed material that is heavily response‐contingent. Eye movements were compared for two versions of the same program that differed only in the choice of the omitted words. The alteration of the required responses resulted in a version with a higher blackout ratio than the original version, which had a low blackout ratio. Eighteen undergraduates received half their material from the high and half their material from the low blackout‐ratio version. The order was counterbalanced. Location and duration of all eye fixations in each item were recorded by a Mackworth Eye Marker Camera. On high blackout‐ratio material, subjects used fewer fixations, shorter fixation time, and shorter scanning time. High blackout‐ratio material failed to evoke the students' attention.