Parameters of saccadic eye movements in reading and dot scanning tasks

Gaze transfer can be influenced by cognitive processes, and previous studies show that the reading process can be performed automatically. Gaze parameters were studied in successive reading and compared after performing two different tasks: reading of the artificially constructed text and scanning of the points distributed in lines. During successive reading the number of saccadic regressions is diminishing, the average saccade amplitude tends to increase, while the overall distributions of amplitudes remain practically the same, which shows that the task is being performed automatically. Amplitude distributions are individual in both the tasks. In the point scanning task the fixation amplitudes have been found to be on average 90 ms longer than in that of text reading for all participants.