Friday, September 25, 2015

Don’t Believe What You Read (Only Once): Comprehension Is Supported by Regressions During Reading

Elizabeth R. Schotter, Randy Tran, and Keith Rayner, 2014
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~eschotter/papers/Schotter_Tran_Rayner_2014_PsychSci.pdf

Summary 
The authors assert that while recent web applications have spurred excitement around the prospect of achieving speed-reading by eliminating eye movements with rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP, in which words are presented briefly one at a time and sequentially, regressions (re-readings of words) are a natural part of the reading process. Besides, they claim that the inability to regress affects comprehension negatively and it is not confined to ambiguous sentences.They believe it can be effective only when text is extremely easy or short. 

In the study, they demonstrate this point with a very simple manipulation: Contributors of the experiment read sentences both normally and in a condition in which words became masked after they moved their eyes away (i.e., with what they refer to as a trailing mask). This experimental manipulation prohibits readers from accessing further information from the words after initially reading them, as in the RSVP method. Comparing comprehension of the sentences between normal reading and reading with the trailing mask allows them to assess how this lack of control over the sequence of the reading process affects comprehension.

Results 
The results of their experiment demonstrate that readers’ control over their eye movements is important for their comprehension. Conditions in which readers cannot go back to reread words (i.e., in the trailing-mask paradigm and in the RSVP method generally) lead to poorer understanding of the text. The fact that this finding did not differ between ambiguous and unambiguous sentences suggests that this is a global effect, not confined to generally difficult language.

Fig.  Results are shown separately for ambiguous sentences (left) and unambiguous sentences (right). The number of observations contributing to each data point is presented in parentheses below the x-axis. Error bars represent ±1 SEM. The dotted line represents chance performance (.5). 


Critique 
Their data call into question how successful apps like Spritz will be in allowing users to read and, crucially, understand text via RSVP presentation. Although RSVP might be fine for reading short, simple sentences in which readers would not typically make regressions, given that readers normally make regressions 10% to 15% of the time, removing this ability will have drastic negative consequences for the understanding of sentences. Although there are several comments suggesting that people generally think of regressions as a “problem” that needs to be “gotten rid of.” In contrast, this study suggest that, regressions add a small amount of time to the reading process but the benefits they provide for understanding far outweigh the costs.

Schotter, E. R., Tran, R., & Rayner, K. (2014). Don’t Believe What You Read (Only Once) Comprehension Is Supported by Regressions During Reading.Psychological science, 0956797614531148.

8 comments:

  1. This is an interesting article. I agree with the notion that re-reading of words add a small amount to the reading process and that the benefits outweigh the negatives. This is especially important for analyst. Do you believe speed reading is still an effective technique information analyst should practice?

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  2. I believe it is important but it is not a magic. Analysts should be aware of the pro's and con's of it and use this technique accordingly.

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  3. I read in one study that users can read more words per minute on a piece of paper and less words per minute on a screen. Based on the article presented, do you believe your author would agree with this?

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    1. Unfortunately the authors do not make that kind of comparison. However, I believe that is another important point.

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  4. This was an interesting read, especially in understanding the importance of regression when reading. Does the article mention how often regression occurs when reading?

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    1. They did not state the regressions in numbers for each contributor. They state that it depends on the ambiguity and clearly helps to increase comprehension level.

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  5. I thought this was a great piece that really underlines the issues with the RSVP method. It just seems like it would only be effective for short simple sentences and nothing that really requires abstract thought or cognitive process beyond the actual act of reading the words.

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