Reading without saccades using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

The complex behaviour that allows processing of information present in a text in order to extract its meaning is what we usually call reading (Rayner, Schotter, Masson, Potter & Treiman, 2016). The objective of the reading may differ depending on the type of text: understanding the instructions in a manual will require different learning than understanding the content in an article or in a story magazine from a novel. In any case, it is implausible that reading occurs without the need to understand the meaning of a text, thus implying understanding the relationship between words and sentences and inferring their meaning. Like any behaviour, reading can also be analyzed at a molecular level. Information is acquired by the sensory organ responsible for the sight, the eye, and conveyed to the occipital region of the brain through fixations and saccades. Further ballistic adjustment movements allow proper placement of the necessary information in the fovea, the region of the retina with the greatest visual acuity able to cover only 2° of the field of view. Through a continuous repositioning, necessary to focus on the target letter, the meaning of a text is processed and stored. This process is time-consuming and is conditioned by various processes. The anatomy of the visual system is one of them. Deficits in the visual system require more time to read, imposing a greater number of repositions on the word. On the other hand, morphological and syntactic properties of the text can make easier or harder deducing the meaning of the text. Some examples are characterized by the type and size of the font, the language of the text, the length, and frequency of use of words in the text and the distance at which it is read. These characteristics have been studied exhaustively by cognitive psychology, and it is not the subject of this work to reconsider the produced results. Instead, the aim is to understand how technology has influenced the study of reading. This influence refers to a methodological aspect and an application aspect. The structure of the manuscript consists of four parts. In the first, the main characteristics of the visual system are briefly described, with particular reference to the anatomy of the eye, the eye movements and the muscles that allow its movement. Besides, there is a brief presentation of the relationship between eye movements and reading. In this part, we will present the main results obtained in the field of cognitive psychology and the interpretations provided to explain its role in understanding a text. The second part concerns how technological developments have changed the way to study reading. This part begins with a description of the technological developments which have created new possibilities for studying the eye movements involved in reading, with particular reference to eye-tracking techniques. The second part of this section analyses new reading possibilities. The displays dimension, for example, can vary from a regular monitor to a smartwatch. It implies the opportunities to read in much more spaces. Similarly, the hyper connection and spread wearability of technological devices created the opportunity to read in much more times. Very often, the reading of short messages, notifications, emails or short newspaper articles takes place in a short time, which can represent the waiting of a bus or a trip on the metro. The third part of the paper focuses on alternative ways of presenting text than the classical one, defining its aims and the main aspects that characterize it. Particular emphasis will be devoted to the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), which will be the subject of the successive chapter. The fourth part will describe the studies conducted on RSVP to compare it with the traditional mode of presentation. This section will deal with some research questions accompanied by the results of the relative experimental analyses. It is evident that to answer to all questions would be too much ambitious and goes beyond the ambitions of this chapter. Thus, the discussion is mainly oriented to the presentation of problems and the proposition of possible experimental analyses. In many cases, a single experiment will be described, which therefore cannot be exhaustive, not even accompanied by an analysis of the literature, in order to give a decisive answer to the question. It is important to emphasise from the beginning that the studies described had a particular objective. Subjects were not required to read a text containing instructions, not even a text written in scientific language or even a manual or a book. Results refer to comprehension in reading magazine articles, with the aim of short reading time. This choice is consistent with the opportunity to read anywhere and even for short time segments through small (smartphones, smartwatches), portable and always-connected devices. Finally, the conclusions of the results of all studies will be described, with suggestions for the use of RSVP regarding specific reading objectives and texts.