This book is divided into five sections dealing with various fundamental issues in current research: attention, information processing and eye movement control; the role of phonology in reading; syntax and discourse processing and computational models and simulations. Control and measurement of eye movements form a prominent theme in the book. A full understanding of the where and when of eye movement control is a prerequisite of any complete theory of reading, since it is precisely at this point that perceptual and cognitive processes interact. Amongst the 'hot topics' included are the relation between parafoveal and foveal visual processing of linguistic information, the role of phonology in fluent reading and the emergence of statistical 'tuning' approaches to sentence parsing.Also discussed in the book are three attempts to develop quantitative models of reading which represent a significant departure in theory-building and a quantum step in the maturation of reading research. Much of the work reported in the book was first presented at the 5th European Workshop on Language Comprehension organised in April 1998 which was held at the CNRS Luminy Campus, near Marseilles. All contributions summarise the state-of-the-art in the relevant areas of reading research.

The distinguished contributors to this volume have been set the problem of describing how we know where to move our eyes. There is a great deal of current interest in the use of eye movement recordings to investigate various mental processes. The common theme is that variations in eye movements indicate variations in the processing of what is being perceived, whether in reading, driving or scene perception. However, a number of problems of interpretation are now emerging, and this edited volume sets out to address these problems. The book investigates controversies concerning the variations in eye movements associated with reading ability, concerning the extent to which text is used by the guidance mechanism while reading, concerning the relationship between eye movements and the control of other body movements, the relationship between what is inspected and what is perceived, and concerning the role of visual control attention in the acquisition of complex perceptual-motor skills, in addition to the nature of the guidance mechanism itself. The origins of the volume are in discussions held at a meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP) that was held in Wurzburg in September 1996. The discussions concerned the landing effect in reading, an effect, that if substantiated, would provide evidence of the use of parafoveal information in eye guidance, and these discussions were explored in more detail at a small meeting in Chamonix, in February 1997. Many of the contributors to this volume were present at the meeting, but the arguments were not resolved in Chamonix either. Other leaders in the field were invited to contribute to the discussion, and this volume is the product. The argument remains unresolved, but the problem is certainly clearer.

The second symposium on processing visible language constituted a different "mix" of participants from the first. Greater emphasis was given to the design of language, both in its historical development and in its current display; and to practical questions associated with machine-implementation oflanguage, in the interactions of person and computer, and in the characteristics of the physical and environmental objects that affect the interaction. Another change was that a special session on theory capped the proceedings. Psychologists remained heavily involved, however, both as contributors to and as discussants of the work pre sented. The motivation of the conferences remains one of bringing together graphic designers, engineers, and psychologists concerned with the display and acquisition of visible language. The papers separately tended to emphasize the one of the three disciplines that mark their authors' field of endeavor, but are constructed to be general rather than parochial. Moreover, within the three disciplines, papers emphasized either the textual or the more pictorial aspects. For example, a session on writing systems ranged from principles that seem to characterize all such systems to specific papers on ancient Egyptian writing, modern Korean, and English shorthand. The complementary session on the nontextual media opened with a discussion of general principles of pictorial communication and included papers on communicating instructions, general information, or religious belief through designs and other pictorial forms, as well as a discussion. of misrepresentation.

It has become a truism that the frozen optical diagram representation of vision is the worst possible picture of the way in which we visually interact with the environment. Even apart from our reaction to moving targets by pursuit movements, our visual behaviour can be said to be characterised by eye movements. We sample from our environment in a series of relatively brief fixations which move from one point to another in a series of extremely rapid jerks known as saccades. Many questions arising from this characteristic of vision are explored within this volume, including the question of how our visual world maintains its perceptual stability despite the drastic changes in input associated with these eye movements.

Edited by a leading scholar in the field, Eye Movements and Visual Cognitionpresents an up-to-date overview of the topics relevant to understanding the relationship between eye movements and visual cognition, particularly in relation to scene perception and reading. Cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists, educational psychologists, and reading specialists will find this volume to be an authoritative source of state-of-the art research in this rapidly expanding area of study.

Eye Movements in Reading: Perceptual and Language Processes focuses on eye movement and cognitive processes as a way to study the reading process. This book also discusses the different aspects of reading. Organized into seven parts encompassing 26 chapters, this book begins with a discussion on the perceptual and psychophysical factors essential to eye movement during reading. This book then explains how some psychophysical factors, such as type size and masking, affect the reading performance. Other chapters consider the role of transient and sustained cells, as well as their possible effects on reading. This text also examines the size of the perceptual span in reading and the integration of information across eye movement. Finally, this book explains the eye movement abnormalities, general eye movement parameters, and the cognitive processes within the reading disabled group. This book is a valuable resource to optometrists, scientists, field researchers, and readers who are interested in the reading process.