Return-sweep saccades in oral reading.

Recent research on return-sweep saccades has improved our understanding of eye movements when reading paragraphs. However, these saccades, which take our gaze from the end of one line to the start of the next line, have been studied only within the context of silent reading. Articulatory demands and the coordination of the eye-voice span (EVS) at line boundaries suggest that the execution of this saccade may be different in oral reading.

Do readers use character information when programming return-sweep saccades?

Reading saccades that occur within a single line of text are guided by the size of letters. However, readers occasionally need to make longer saccades (known as return-sweeps) that take their eyes from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next. In this study, we tested whether return-sweep saccades are also guided by font size information and whether this guidance depends on visual acuity of the return-sweep target area.