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Updated: May 6, 2026

Using Eye Movements to Evaluate the Cognitive Processes Involved in Text Comprehension
Published on: January 10, 2014
Letter detection: A window to unitization and other cognitive processes in reading text
1Department of Psychology, Muenzinger Building, University of Colorado, Campus Box 345, 80309-0345, Boulder, CO, ahealy@clipr.colorado.edu.
Abstract:
Experiments are reviewed that use the letter-detection task, in which subjects read text and circle target letters. Evidence is provided that the letter-detection task reveals the processing units used in reading text and is influenced as well by visual, phonetic, and a combination of semantic and syntactic factors. Specifically, it is shown that circling a target letter in a word depends on the familiarity of the word's visual configuration, the location of the word in the reader's visual field, the phonetic representation of the letter in the word, and a combination of the word's meaning and its grammatical function.
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