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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Eye-tracking to Distinguish Comprehension-based and Oculomotor-based Regressive Eye Movements During Reading
Published on: October 18, 2018
The time course of processing emotion-laden words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements
Faye Knickerbocker1, Rebecca L Johnson2, Emma L Starr2
1East Carolina University, United States of America.
Abstract:
While recent research has explored the effect that positive and negative emotion words (e.g., happy or sad) have on the eye-movement record during reading, the current study examined the effect of positive and negative emotion-laden words (e.g., birthday or funeral) on eye movements. Emotion-laden words do not express a state of mind but have emotional associations and connotations. The current results indicated that both positive and negative emotion-laden words have a processing advantage over neutral words, although the relative time-course of processing differs between words of positive and negative valence. Specifically, positive emotion-laden words showed advantages in early, late, and post-target measures, while negative emotion-laden words showed effects only in late and post-target measures.
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