Peripheral and cognitive components of eye guidance in filled-space reading

Abstract

Five undergraduates read aloud three pages of text a day for 10 days. One page of text each day had interword spaces filled with a black letter-like filler, one with a red filler, and one was normal (control). Results showed that (1) red fillers produced a reading rate significantly below normal text, (2) black fillers yielded a significantly lower reading rate than red fillers, and (3) with practice, the reading rate for the black-filled condition rose significantly. Testing on Day 11 with an alternative filler form showed that a specific form was being learned with practice. Results were interpreted as support for both peripheral guidance of eye movement by physical cues and cognitive guidance involving reader-generated hypotheses about the text. © 1978 Psychonomic Society, Inc.