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...cognitive psychology another that characteristic of the reading research done within the domain of educational psychology. In cognitive psychology, mental processes related to reading have been intensively investigated during the past two decades using different kinds of on-line measurements (for a review, see e.g. Kieras & Just, 1984), such as readers' eye movement recordings (for a review, see Rayner, 1998). This line of research has led to the development of detailed processing models depicting how competent readers recognize words, parse the syntactic structure of sentences, and make inferences on-line. These studies have primarily concentrated on mental processes characteristic of all or most adult readers. Moreover, reading-related mental processes have typically been studied by presenting to the participants relatively short texts comprising no more than a few sentences. This is understandable as the focus has been on relatively micro-level analyses of reading behaviour.
In educational psychology, on the other hand, the focus has been more on the differences between competent and less competent readers (see e.g. Jenkins, Fuchs, van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003; Oakhill & Beard, 1999; Stanovich, 1982a, 1982b), and how to promote reading proficiency and efficient reading strategies among readers of different ages and skill levels (see e.g. De Corte, Verschaffel, & van de Ven, 2001; Garner, 1987; Paris & Oka, 1986). Moreover, in this research tradition, it has also been fairly common to make inferences about the actual reading processes on the basis of off-line measures, such as verbal reports, structured interviews, or free recalls collected after reading (for a review, see Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). In contrast to the cognitive research tradition, in educational psychology longer texts (e.g. authentic textbook passages) are typically used as the study materials. This has the consequence that more strategic components of reading are tapped into than in the cognitive research that has concentrated on more automatized processes.
We think the time is ripe to start integrating these two research traditions in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of reading as a cognitive skill (for a similar argument, see Lorch & van den Broek, 1997). The specific objective of the present study was to examine individual reading strategies by using both an on-line (eye tracking) and an off-line (verbal reports) measure. We were particularly interested in examining the degree to which readers are aware of specific aspects of their own reading behaviour, particularly the act of reinspecting previously read text (see below for the motivation of this choice). Recording of readers' eye movement patterns is very well suited to study spontaneous reading strategies, (1) because eye movements are a necessary and integral part of normal reading, (2) because the method allows the readers to freely inspect the text in the way they find it appropriate and suitable, and (3) because it yields a temporally and spatially precise record of where readers look in the text and how long they inspect different text regions.
To date, on-line studies of individual reading strategies are scarce. Goldman and Saul (1990) studied on-line reading strategies among college students using a procedure where the reader proceeded in the text by pressing with the computer mouse on the sentence s/he wanted to read. Only one sentence was visible at a time (other sentences were visually masked). Each text was presented on the same computer screen; thus the texts were relatively short. Goldman and Saul distinguished three global reading styles and several more specific strategies. Here we focus only on the more global reading styles (for local reading strategies, see also Aaronson & Ferres, 1984; Graesser, Haberlandt, & Schneider, 1989; Olson, Kliegl, Davidson, & Foltz, 1985; for reading strategies of older readers, see Stine, 1990; Soederberg Miller & Stine-Morrow, 1998). One global strategy was to read the text linearly once through without looking back in text. The second strategy was one, where readers first read the text through, after which they reread parts of it. Readers adopting the third strategy made look-backs also prior to reaching the end of the text.
Hyona et al. (2002) registered university students' eye movement patterns while they read two similarly structured long expository texts in preparation to write a summary of the text. To distinguish between different reading styles, a cluster analysis was performed on the eye movement measures. The following sentence-level eye movement measures were employed: the progressive first-pass fixation time, the rereading fixation time, and the look-back fixation time (see Hyona, Lorch, & Rinck, 2003, for further details). The progressive fixation time is the sum of fixations landing on an unread part of the sentence when first passing through it. Thus, this measure reflects an immediate encounter with each new sentence in the text. For the rereading fixation time measure, the durations of fixations that are made back to a previously read part of a sentence prior to going to the next sentence are summed up. This measure reflects the immediate reprocessing of each sentence. Finally, the look-back fixation time is the summed duration of fixations that land on a previous sentence that has once been fully read. As discussed further below, the look-back fixations presumably reflect the most strategic aspect of readers' eye behaviour.
Hyona et al. (2002) computed these eye movement measures separately for different types of sentences in the text's content structure. The two expository texts used consisted of multiple, relatively independent subtopics subsumed under one main topic. One of the texts, the endangered species text comprised 10 subtopics, each of which discussed in two text paragraphs an endangered animal. Each subtopic was signalled with a topic heading. The first sentence of each paragraph (the topic sentence) conveyed a key statement that was then elaborated in the remaining part of the paragraph.
Using cluster analyses, Hyona et al. (2002) distinguished four groups of readers among their adult reader sample. These groups were coined fast linear readers, slow linear readers, topic structure processors, and non-selective reviewers. What was common to the linear readers was the almost total absence of look-back fixations. The slow linear readers were distinguished from the fast ones by making many more rereading fixations prior to moving to the next sentence. Unlike the linear readers, the topic structure processors and the non-selective reviewers made frequent look-backs to earlier parts of the text. The two reader groups differed in that topic structure processors showed sensitivity to the text's content structure by looking back primarily to the topic headings and the topic sentences (i.e. the main points), whereas the look-backs of the non-selective reviewers were more evenly distributed across the different type of sentences. The adopted reading style had consequences for the mental representation constructed of the text. The text summaries written by the topic structure processors reflected most faithfully the text contents, whereas the poorest summaries were written by the slow linear readers.
Linear readers of Hyona et al. (2002) closely correspond to one of the three global reading styles of Goldman and Saul (1990); readers who read the text linearly from top to bottom without looking back. The other two global reading styles of Goldman and Saul were characterized by making look-backs in text; the readers who reread the text (or a significant part of it) after once reading it through resembles the reading style of non-selective reviewers of Hyona et al. On the other hand, as Goldman and Saul used rather short texts, a reading style equivalent of topic structure processors cannot be readily established.
Concerning individual differences in reading behaviour among competent adult readers, the study of Hyona et al. (2002) points to two key dimensions: one is the speed with which each sentence is read for the first time, and the other is the look-back behaviour (i.e. the frequency of look-backs and their destination; see also Goldman & Saul, 1990). Although Hyona et al. found the reading style to be consistent within each reader (most readers were assigned to the same reader group using the eye movement data for another, similarly structured text), it is less clear whether the same reader groups could be established using another sample of adult readers. Thus, the first aim of the present study was to try to replicate the results of Hyona et al. using a new sample of adult readers. To replicate Hyona et al., a 4-cluster solution should give us (a) two reader groups (i.e. two groups of linear readers) who make very little look-backs and show little sensitivity to the text's topic structure in their look-back behaviour (they would differ from each other in the amount of time spent reading the text sentences...
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