Visual search patterns for multilingual word search puzzles, a pilot study

Word search puzzles are recognized as a valid word recognition task. Eye gaze patterns have been investigated during visual search and reading, but the word search puzzle requires both searching and word recognition. This paper will discuss findings from an eye-tracking study of word search puzzles in three languages, of varying fluency for the participants. Results indicated that participants employ a search strategy that is somewhat dependent on language fluency and varies from a rigid, structured search pattern to randomly searching for a target word. The majority of gaze measurements are not significantly influenced by either word length or fluency of presented language, although mean fixation durations are longer for shorter words.