Measuring Reading Speed

Until Tobii (or similar) are part of laptops, it would be awesome to have reading devices automatically measure reading speed.  Moreover, on the Kindle, everything is already there – the page turn event is perfect to measure the average reading speed.  Want!

Reading

Reading a paper call Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research (published in 1998).  Gonna use this thing to take notes. 

• It being 11 years old seems a bit old, but perhaps most of the interesting stuff was found early on?
• Basic terminology:

• Saccade – when eye moves from looking at point A to point B

• Duration of a saccade related to distance covered: 2º take 30ms, 5º take 40-50ms
• saccade latency – saccade a motor movement –> latency – 150-170ms.

• separate process: decision on when and where to move eyes
• evidence: cognitive processes can influence latency
• gap effect – if fixation point disappears before appearance of target, latency goes down

global center of gravity effect – given two objects, first saccade goes between them.  Position related to “weight” of objects (closer to heavier).