Eye Movements and On-line Language Comprehension Processes

Eye movement records have been used profitably to study on-line comprehension processes in reading. We present some basic facts about eye movements during reading, emphasising issues concerning the use of eye movement data to infer cognitive processes that are involved in (1) word processing, (2) syntactic parsing, and (3) higher-order processes. We review research on each of these topics and present new data dealing with word processing and high-order processes. We conclude that the analysis of eye movement records provides a great deal of useful information about on-line processing and that eye movement recording is a good way to study many critical issues concerning language comprehension processes.