Eye movement control in reading: word predictability has little influence on initial landing positions in words

We examined the initial landing position of the eyes in target words that w ere either predictable or unpredictable from the preceding sentence context . Although readers skipped over predictable words more than unpredictable w ords and spent less time on predictable words when they did fixate on them, there was no difference in the launch site of the saccade to the target wo rd. Moreover, there was only a very small difference in the initial landing position on the target word as a function of predictability when the targe t words were fixated which is most parsimoniously explained by positing tha t a few programmed skips of the target word fell short of their intended ta rget. These results suggest: that low-level processing is primarily respons ible for landing position effects in reading. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd . All rights reserved.