A deeper understanding of optimal viewing position using eye fixations and character recognition on text-viewing and reading tasks

Existing literature reveals that during reading, gaze fixations within a word are not necessarily close to the optimal reading position. The optimal position for reading represents the gaze fixation near the center of each word for which recognition time is minimal. In our study, we examined the match between optimal position and initial fixation position, which has not been studied before. We did this in conventional reading and in two text-viewing tasks. For the text-viewing tasks, we employed multiple words that were nonisolated in the presentation but could be examined individually in rhythm and linguistic context. We discovered that for the textviewing tasks, the initial fixation position tends to be close to the optimal position, which was in contrast to the conventional reading task. This finding will help us understand the relationship between optimal position and reading context and inform the development of new reading applications.