Eye movement control in scene viewing and reading: evidence from the stimulus onset delay paradigm

The present study used the stimulus onset delay paradigm to investigate eye movement control in reading and in scene viewing in a within-participants design. Short onset delays (0, 25, 50, 200, and 350 ms) were chosen to simulate the type of natural processing difficulty encountered in reading and scene viewing. Fixation duration increased linearly with delay duration, and the effect was equivalent for both tasks. Although fixations were longer in scene viewing, the effects of onset delay were highly consistent across tasks. These results suggest that reading and scene viewing share a common mechanism for saccade planning and control.