Eye-movement analysis in reading content words and function words Sophie Roussel1, Anne Rohr1, Eric Raufaste 2, Jean-Luc Nespoulous1 1Laboratoire Lordat – CEA.1941- IFR N°96 - Université Toulouse-II, France 2 Laboratoire Travail et Cognition – UMR5551 du CNRS - Université Toulouse-II, France Address for correspondence: Sophie Roussel - Laboratoire Lordat Université Toulouse-II Maison de la Recherche 5, Allées A. Machado, 31058 Toulouse Cedex France Email:
[email protected] Tel: (+33) 561-503-594 Fax: (+33) 561-504-918 Running Head: EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 1 ABSTRACT Detection task studies and studies of eye-movement in reading all pointed out a differential processing of content and function words. Several determinants were proposed: grammatical class, word configuration, word frequency, etc. Although function words are both “short” and “highly frequent”, interactions between those factors were left widely underdetermined. Hence, the present eye-movement study aimed at isolate the specific effect of grammatical class, controlling other factors, and specifically frequency and form properties (e.g. word length). Results confirm that grammatical class induces by itself different attentional patterns with more fixations on content words than on function words. When words were gazed, there were longer gaze durations and smaller pupil diameter on content words than on function words. Keywords: Reading - Eye-movements - content word – function words ROUSSEL EYE-MOVEMENTS in READING 2 When reading a text, all words are not read in a similar way. The hypothesis of a differential processing of content and function words in non-pathological persons comes from the observation of aphasic patients with agrammatism.