Regularities in Reading Times

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The current project is concerned with predicting text comprehension from reading process measures. The process of skilled reading is usually marked by fast information processing, as well as a systematic coupling between reading process and text.The problem is, however, that reading speed has an ambiguous relationship to text comprehension, and reading speed components are not very predictive of text comprehension. Also, coupling between reading process and text is usually assessed by correlating process measures (response times, eye movements...) with linguistic text features (lexical, semantical, syntactical and coherence-related text descriptors...). However, the strength of this correlation varies systematically between different languages.The current project advances the hypothesis that reading time regularity (RTR) can serve as a new metric that predicts reading comprehension from reading process measures. RTR is based on statistical measures of the degree of regularity in a sequence (Recurrence Quantification Analysis, Permutation Entropy), such as time series measures of response times or eye movements during text reading. Particularly, it is hypothesized that RTR captures the coupling strength between reading process measures and linguistic text features. Further, it is hypothesized that the degree of this coupling strength is predictive of reading comprehension. Because the calculation of RTR does not entail linguistic features, but is based on reading process measures alone, it is hypothesized that RTR makes for a language-independent metric of reading process fluency.In the current proposal, three subprojects test the specific hypotheses that 1) RTR captures coupling between reading process and text, 2) RTR of the reading process predicts reading comprehension, and 3) RTR predicts comprehension invariantly across reading in different languages.Hypothesis 1 is investigated by comparing different reading conditions which are known to increase or decrease coupling between reading process and text (such as mindful vs. mindless reading, or speed reading vs. reading for comprehension). Hypothesis 2 is investigated by examining eye movements during text reading and using RTR of eye movements to predict reading comprehension performance. Hypothesis 3 is investigated by conducting a cross-language study of reading in Chinese, English, German, and Hebrew, relating RTR of eye movements to reading comprehension performance across these languages.Taken together, the proposed research aims at establishing RTR as language-invariant metric for fluent reading, based on how well readers are able to utilize relevant linguistic information during the reading process in a systematic manner.