ABSTRACT
A methodology can be thought of as a tool, and the use of eye fixation experiments to study reading comprehension can be thought of as one more tool in a larger kit that cognitive psychologists have at their disposal. Eye fixations occur naturally during reading, and technology allows them to be recorded without intruding on the reader. Moreover, the reading task itself is undisturbed, and unaccompanied by unusual secondary tasks, such as monitoring for a second stimulus or making lexical-decision judgments. In the procedure that use most often, the reader sits in an armchair and reads a text displayed on a video monitor while his or her eye fixations are monitored and recorded from a distance. This procedure is relatively similar to normal reading in several respects. The main dependent measure is the gaze duration, rather than the duration of individual eye fixations.
