ABSTRACT
A large body of research dealing with eye movements in reading is reviewed. The introduction contains a brief historical review of eye movement research followed by a brief discussion of the basic characteristics of eye movements in reading. The remainder of the review is in two main sections. In the first, the focus is on what is known about the role of eye movements in reading (i.e. the role of eye movements in the intake of visual information from the printed page). In the second, the focus is on the use of eye movements to understand the underlying cognitive processes in reading. We argue that understanding eye movements in reading requires an understanding of cognitive processing in reading and vice versa and that there has been significant recent progress in both these areas. We also compare eye movements as a measure of on-line processes in reading to other popular techniques.
