Eye movements and non-canonical reading: comments on
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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Eye-tracking to Distinguish Comprehension-based and Oculomotor-based Regressive Eye Movements During Reading
Published on: October 18, 2018
Keith Rayner1, Alexander Pollatsek, Simon P Liversedge
1Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, USA. krayner@ucsd.edu
Abstract:
Kennedy and Pynte [Kennedy, A., & Pynte, J. (2008). The consequences of violations to reading order: An eye movement analysis. Vision Research, 48, 2309-2320] presented data that they suggested pose problems for models of eye movement control in reading in which words are encoded serially. They focus on situations in which pairs of words are fixated out of order (i.e., the first word is skipped and the second fixated prior to a regression back to the first word). We strongly disagree with their claims and contest their arguments. We argue that their data set was obtained selectively and the events they believe are problematic do not occur frequently during reading. Furthermore, we do not consider that Kennedy and Pynte's arguments pose serious difficulties for serial models of reading such as E-Z Reader.
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