ИСТИНА

In reading the pattern of eye movements is a consequence of learning strategy to use inter-word spaces to plan fixation locations. Any violation of inter-word spaces structure may change oculomotor strategies during reading. The goal of our experiment was to study the differences in strategies in the conditions when the word-boundary information was difficult to extract. Nine normal texts of medium complexity were used. Every text was modified in the following way: 1) inter-word spaces were deleted; 2) regular inter-letter spaces were inserted; 3) the first letter of every word was moved to the last letter of the previous word 4) inner letters of words were mixed in random order 5) random spaces were inserted in every word. Eleven observers (age range 17—31) were tested. The eye movements during reading were registered using iView X Hi-Speed 1250 technique. The results showed that the pattern of eye movements changed differently depending on the type of text modification. For all modified texts the fixation locations shifted to the problem areas of the text to distinguish real/false inter-word spaces. The parameters of eye movements showed that the most difficult was the fifth type with random spaces inserted in every word.