Prof. Erik D. Reichle was invited by Prof. Xingshan Li to visit Li's lab
Topic：The Development of Eye-Movement Control and Reading Skill
Speaker： Prof. Erik D. Reichle
Center for Vision and Cognition
University of Southampton
Time：19th, Dec. 14:00-15:30
Venue：524 Meeting Room, South Building
Abstract：
A number of recent studies (see Blythe & Joseph, 2011) have documented both similarities and differences between the patterns of eye movements of beginning (i.e., children) and adult (i.e., skilled) readers. For example, whereas both groups tend to direct their eyes towards the centers of words (Joseph et al., 2009), children tend to make more fixations that are longer in duration and that are modulated to a greater degree by lexical variables (e.g., word frequency; Blythe et al., 2009). The goal of the research described in this talk was to use an existing computational model of eye-movement control, E-Z Reader (Reichle, 2011), to evaluate two possible theoretical accounts of the similarities and differences in children’s versus adults’ eye movements—one in which they reflect a “tuning” of the oculomotor system (e.g., more rapid saccadic programming), and one in which they reflect increasing linguistic proficiency (e.g., more rapid lexical access). The simulation results suggest that the developmental changes that have been reported as children become skilled adult readers reflect increasing linguistic proficiency, and in particular, increasingly rapid lexical processing. The implications of this conclusion with respect to aging (i.e., college-aged versus older readers) and individual differences in reading ability will be discussed.