Analysis of Words Per Minute Correlated to Fixation Length While Searching

Previous studies have shown that average fixation duration is different depending on what task a person is performing. Our goal was to find out whether or not one’s reading speed would affect their average fixation duration during a visual search. We collected data on 11 different participants, first measuring reading speed, measured in words per minute (wpm), by having them read a sample passage, then putting them through three different visual search tasks ranging from easy to very difficult to find the target. We hypothesized that faster readers would have shorter average fixation length, due to their ability and practice gathering information quickly during reading. Results do not support this hypothesis, however, as there seems to be no correlation between reading speed and fixation length at all. Based on this, we can conclude that people process information gathered by their eyes very differently depending on the source and goal of their task.