Eye-tracking as a proxy for coherence and complexity of texts

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Neuroscience
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Reading is a complex cognitive process involving oculomotor control, attention, and language processing.
• Eye movements during reading consist of saccades and fixations, with information captured during fixations.
• Text properties like form, content, and style may influence individual reading behaviors and eye-movement patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the correlation between eye-tracking patterns and subjective text properties.
• To determine if eye-tracking can serve as a proxy for text complexity and coherence.
• To explore the relationship between text characteristics and reading behavior.

Main Methods:

• Conducted eye-tracking experiments with participants reading diverse text types (children's stories, random words, literature).
• Performed an extensive internet survey to categorize texts by complexity and coherence across various demographics.
• Utilized computational analysis of fixation maps and thermodynamic analysis with the Maximum-Entropy Model.

Main Results:

• A strong correlation was found between the "magnetization" of fixation configurations and text complexity.
• Coherent texts were identified as being closer to their "critical points" compared to non-coherent texts.
• Distinct reading activities were suggested to be induced by different text types.

Conclusions:

• Eye-tracking fixation patterns can quantitatively reflect text complexity.
• Thermodynamic analysis using the Maximum-Entropy Model provides insights into text coherence and reading engagement.
• Reading behavior, as measured by eye-tracking, is influenced by the subjective properties of a text.