The Influence of Text Legibility on Eye Movements During Reading

Subjects read passages of text on a video monitor as their eye movements were recorded. In Experiment 1, the passages were presented either in a format (ClearType) designed to display smoother, clearer characters on LCD monitors by eliminating pixilation or in standard format (non-ClearType). The passages were also presented in three different fonts (Times New Roman, Harrington and Script MT bold) which differed in how easy the letters were to encode. While there were no comprehension differences due to ClearType or font, ClearType led to faster reading, fewer fixations, and shorter fixation durations than non-ClearType. There were also font differences, with Times New Roman leading to faster reading than the other two fonts. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results that ClearType lead to faster reading than non-ClearType when subjects read single sentences with high or low frequency target words. Across both experiments, word frequency interacted with presentation format. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.