Abstract
Fixation durations during reading range from less than 50 ms to more than 1 second with means in the order of 220 ms to 250 ms and standard deviations of approximately 80 ms to 100 ms. An interesting property of frequency distributions of fixation duration is the gradual increase in the relative frequencies up to approximately 140 ms followed by a much steeper increase for longer fixation durations until the modal fixation duration interval is reached. According to McConkie et al. (1994), this change in the slope of frequency distributions is of functional significance: The duration of fixations of 140 ms or less is determined by information obtained during the pior fixation, the duration of longer fixations is controlled ‘on line’, by properties of fixated text so that departing saccades can be “directly controlled”.
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Radach, R., Heller, D., Inhoff, A. (1999). Occurrence and Function of Very Short Fixation Durations in Reading. In: Becker, W., Deubel, H., Mergner, T. (eds) Current Oculomotor Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3054-8_46
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