Oculomotor and cognitive control of eye movements in reading: evidence from mindless reading.

In the present study, we investigated the influence of cognitive factors on eye-movement behaviors in reading. Participants performed two tasks: a normal-reading task, as well as a mindless-reading task in which letters were replaced with unreadable block shapes. This mindless-reading task served as an oculomotor control condition, simulating the visual aspects of reading but removing higher-level linguistic processing. Fixation durations, word skipping, and some regressions were influenced by cognitive factors, whereas eye movements within words appeared to be less open to cognitive control. Implications for models of eye-movement control in reading are discussed.