Carter Benjamin T, Luke Steven G
Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2018 Mar;44(3):482-492. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000471. Epub 2017 Aug 17.
Eye movements are used to study a variety of cognitive phenomena, including attention, perception, memory, language, reading, decision making, and many others, as well as cognitive impairments and individual differences in cognition. These studies assume, with little evidence, that eye movements are stable across time and trials. Eye movement stability must be better characterized to understand the full theoretical and clinical implications of individual differences in eye movement behavior. The present study examined eye movement reliability in normal individuals during reading. Thirty-nine participants completed 2 sessions of a reading task separated by 1 month. Means and standard deviations of fixation duration, saccade amplitude, first fixation duration, gaze duration, total time, go-past time, skipping, refixation and regression probabilities were compared both between sessions and across trials within sessions. All correlations were highly significant, indicating that eye movement behaviors are stable within individuals across several weeks and highly stable across trials within each individual. The different components of the ex-Gaussian distribution of fixation durations were also highly stable over time. Differences in sensitivity to lexical variables (frequency, predictability, length) were also compared, and were also observed to be highly stable across time. Eye movements in reading are therefore suitable for studying cognition and its neural underpinnings, as well as cognitive development and longitudinal change. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
眼动被用于研究各种认知现象，包括注意力、感知、记忆、语言、阅读、决策等等，以及认知障碍和认知方面的个体差异。这些研究在几乎没有证据的情况下假定，眼动在时间和试验过程中是稳定的。必须更好地刻画眼动稳定性，以便理解眼动行为个体差异的全部理论和临床意义。本研究考察了正常个体在阅读过程中的眼动可靠性。39名参与者完成了相隔1个月的两个阅读任务环节。比较了两个环节之间以及每个环节内不同试验之间注视持续时间、扫视幅度、首次注视持续时间、注视时长、总时间、越过时间、跳读、回视和回归概率的均值和标准差。所有相关性都非常显著，表明眼动行为在个体内数周时间内是稳定的，并且在每个个体的不同试验中高度稳定。注视持续时间的前高斯分布的不同成分随着时间也高度稳定。还比较了对词汇变量（频率、可预测性、长度）敏感性的差异，并且观察到这些差异在时间上也高度稳定。因此，阅读中的眼动适用于研究认知及其神经基础，以及认知发展和纵向变化。讨论了这些发现的理论和临床意义。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》 ）
