The timeline of word recognition and oculomotor control in reading

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Werner Sommer
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2007 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 34181293

During the previous funding period, we Investigated elementary and controversial issues concerning the processes involved in reading by simultaneous recording of eye movements(EM) and event-related potenfials (ERP). Based on our methodological and theorefical achievements, we propose to now focus on two issues. First, the influence of parafoveal information: Is there a preview benefit based on meaning? Are these effects mediated by Individual differences in parafoveal visual acuity? Second, spatial attention span: Does the influence of parafoveal words depend on the type of difficulty (perceptual, lexical,semantic/emofional) to process the fixated word? Is the width of the attentional distribution dynamically regulated as a function of processing load at the fovea? Answers to these questions will help to refine models of oculomotor control during reading and will distinguish between frameworks employing processing gradients versus sequenfial attention shifts.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 868: Computational Modelling of Behavioural, Cognitive and Neural Dynamics
• Participating Person: Professor Reinhold Kliegl, Ph.D.