Is information density a reliable universal predictor of eye movement patterns in silent reading?

Abstract

The role of information density as a reliable universal predictor of eye movement patterns in silent reading is considered. Density differences between Russian and English are taken to explain the difference in eye movement patterns for readers with Russian as a native language compared to English-speaking readers. An empirical eye tracking study shows that only one of four expectations got confirmed. Supposedly, the eye-movement pattern observed for Russian could be influenced by some additional language-specific properties of Russian other than information density. We conclude that a universal algorithm that allows to predict eye movement patterns during silent reading based on language density only hardly ever exists.