The 'center of gravity' of words: evidence for an effect of the word-initial letters.
When the eye saccades to eccentric word targets, it tends to land in a position which can be described as the center of gravity of the configuration. By manipulating the relative intensity of the word-initial and -ending letters, it was shown that the 'global effect' of luminance distribution within words is strongly attenuated when the word-initial letters are informative and orthographically irregular. Results show that the orthographic structure of the word-initial letters exerts an influence on the saccadic computation that may cancel the luminance distribution effect.
Beauvillain
C
C
Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale URA, Universite Rene Descartes, Paris, France. BEAUVI@IDF.ext. jussieu.fr
Dore
K
K
Baudouin
V
V
D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008029:Lighting; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D014794:Visual Fields