The Preferred Viewing Location in Top-to-Bottom Sentence Reading

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• The preferred viewing location (PVL) describes the tendency for readers to fixate left of a word's center during sentence reading.
• This contrasts with the optimal viewing location (OVL) for single words, which is at the word's center.
• Existing theories offer conflicting explanations for the PVL's origin.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the history and theoretical explanations of the PVL in eye-tracking research.
• To investigate whether the PVL results from oculomotor error or a processing advantage.
• To disentangle tracking direction from landing position using a novel experimental setup.

Main Methods:

• Historical review of eye-tracking studies on PVL since Rayner (1979).
• Experimental manipulation separating tracking direction (left-to-right) and landing position (left-to-right within a word).
• Eye movements recorded as participants read sentences presented one word per line, top-to-bottom on a screen.

Main Results:

• Participants continued to exhibit the PVL, fixating left of word centers.
• The PVL persisted even when the experimental design separated reading direction from landing position.
• This suggests the PVL is not solely attributable to oculomotor error.

Conclusions:

• The preferred viewing location (PVL) in reading is a robust phenomenon.
• Findings indicate that the PVL is not exclusively caused by oculomotor error.
• A processing advantage during reading may contribute to the PVL.