Tracking your emotions: An eye-tracking study on reader's engagement with perspective during text comprehension

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Reading comprehension involves complex cognitive processes.
• Pronoun resolution is a key aspect of text processing.
• Reader perspective can influence cognitive load and engagement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of narrative perspective (personal vs. onlooker) on eye movements during reading.
• To examine how emotional valence (positive vs. negative) interacts with perspective effects on reading.
• To analyze fixation patterns on pronouns based on perspective and text context.

Main Methods:

• Utilized eye-tracking technology to record participants' reading behavior.
• Presented participants with texts written in either a second-person ('you') or third-person ('he'/'she') perspective.
• Manipulated the emotional valence of the text stimuli (positive or negative).

Main Results:

• Processing the pronoun 'you' was found to be easier than 'he' or 'she' early in the text.
• Fixations on third-person pronouns ('he'/'she') decreased with increased character familiarity.
• This decrease in fixations on 'he'/'she' was particularly pronounced in negative text contexts.

Conclusions:

• Narrative perspective significantly influences reading efficiency and eye movement patterns.
• Reader engagement with characters, especially in emotionally charged contexts, affects pronoun processing.
• Findings contribute to understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying perspective-taking in reading.